L 


o 


LOUIS  IX  OF  FRAU CE.) 

/ 


New  York, 


P 


Y.  Collier. 


THE 


MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD; 

AND 

TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


BY 

KEY.  BERNARD  O’REILLY,  L.D. 


(LAVAL.) 


TWO  VOL  TIMES  IN  ONE. 


NEW  YORK : 

PETER  F.  COLLIER,  PUBLISHER. 

1881 


OOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  MASS. 


\ , 


&  h) 

x  KJ' 


1 

JL 


/ 


% 


THE  MIEEOE 

OF 

*  \ 

TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


A  Book  of  Instruction  for  Women  in  the  World. 


“  At  the  present  day,  I  swear  to  thee,  that  there  are  Women  in  the  World  of  such 
excellence,  that  I  have  more  envy  of  the  life  which  they  lead  in  secret,  than  of  all  the  Sciences 
which  the  Ancients  taught  in  public.”— Antonio  de  Guevara. 


Copyright, 

1877. 

Bx  P.  F.  Collier. 


New  York:  J.  J.  Little  &  Co.,  Printers, 
10  to  20  Astor  Plaeo. 


* 


I 


'i 


TO 


THE  MEMORY  OF 

» 

MY  MOTHER, 

,  '  »  i 

TAKEN  FROM  ME  IN  MY  CHILDHOOD  : 

AN  IRREPARABLE  LOSS, 

,  /  ’  ' 

AND  A  LIFE-LONG  REGRET# 


•t  \ 

\  ' 


New  York,  Nov.  10th,  1817. 


IMPRIMATUR. 

,  JOHN  CARDINAL  McCLOSKY, 

ARCHBISHOP  OF  NEW  YORK. 


Archiepiscopal  Residence,  Quebec,  November  16,  1877. 
Rev.  B.  O’Reilly,  New  York. 

Reverend  and  Dear  Sir  : — I  received  in  good  time  your  letter  of  the  6th 
instant,  with  the  first  256  pages  of  your  last  work,  “  The  Mirror  of  True 
Womanhood.” 

•  Before  sending  you  an  answer  I  wished  to  read  a  few  chapters  of  this 
hook,  and  now  I  can  hut  congratulate  and  thank  you  for  it.  It  would  he 
desirable  to  have  this  work  translated  into  French,  and  circulated  among  our 
Canadian  people,  who,  I  am  quite  certain,  would  read  it  with  interest  and 
benefit  to  themselves. 

Pray  accept  once  more  my  congratulation  and  thanks,  and  believe  me  your 
devoted  servant.  *  E.  A.,  Archbishop  of  Quebec. 


Cincinnati,  November  12,  1877. 

Reverend  and  Dear  Sir  : — Thanks  for  your  beautiful  new  book,  “The 
Mirror  of  True  Womanhood.”  Like  St.  Francis  de  Sales’  “Devout  Life,” 
written,  I  think,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Bon  Henri  (Henry  IY.  of  France), 
it  shows  that,  if  we  should  look  for  the  perfect  religious  in  convents,  perfec¬ 
tion  is  also  attainable  in  the  world. 

May  God  grant  you  the  multos  annos  to  write  more  books  ! 

Yours  sincerely, 

J.  B.  PURCELL,  Archbp.  Cincinnati. 


Rev.  Dr.  O’Reilly  . 


278  Ohio  St.,  Chicago,  November  12,  1877. 


Dear  Rev.  Sir  : — Your  very  kind  letter  reached  me  this  morning,  and  it 
was  followed  in  a  few  hours  by  the  superb  copy  of  your  “  Life  of  Pius  IX.”  I 
am  rejoiced  to  hear  that  your  publisher  has  been  compelled  to  commence  a 
seventh  edition. 

The  new  work  of  which  I  have  received  the  advance  sheets  to-day,  “  The 
Mirror  of  True  Womanhood,”  is  a  work  fitted  to  the  times.  It  will  be  of  vast 
service  to  many  mothers  and  daughters  in  the  Church*  by  showing  them  how 
they  may  practically  conform  their  lives  to  the  bright  pictures  of  womanly 
virtue  you  have  so  felicitously  portrayed.  And  if  others  outside  the  Church 
may  be  induced  to  look  into  your  pages,  how  many  may  be  saved  who  are 
eager  to  do  good  and  live  virtuously,  and  have  no  one  to  teach  them  !  There 
is  a  vast  multitude  of  women  in  this  country  marching  toward  a  precipice  of 
ruin,  and  it  is  a  mystery  to  know  what  to  do  to  arrest  their  downward  progress. 
Many  of  them  have  no  religion,  and,  though  a  man  without  religion  is  danger¬ 
ous  to  society,  a  woman  who  is  destitute  of  it  is  prone  to  be  a  monster. 

I  shall  welcome  your  complete  work  with  the  highest  satisfaction. 

Gratefully  your  servant, 

THOMAS  FOLEY,  Bishop  Adm.  Chicago. 

iv 


THE  AUTHOR’S  PREFACE. 


It  is  not  without  diffidence  that  this  book  is  sent  forth  to 
take  its  place  in  the  literature  of  Christian  households. 
The  form  in  which  its  teachings  are  imparted  is  novel,  and 
may  appear  to  many  strange.  But  a  word  of  explanation 
from  the  author  may  suffice  to  the  fair-minded  reader. 

Ascetic  works  we  have  in  superabundance ;  but  these 
would  not  reach  the  class  of  readers  for  whom  these  chap¬ 
ters  are  destined,  nor  would  they  be  taken  up  and  perused 
in  the  hours  which  might  be  given  to  a  work  which  is  not 
professedly  one  of  devotion.  Perhaps,  too,  there  may  be 
found  in  the  following  pages  instructions  which  will  prove 
more  attractive  and  profitable  to  its  readers  than  the  more 
arid  lessons  of  the  ascetic  or  the  didactic  writer. 

The  chief  object  which  the  author  had  in  view  in  under¬ 
taking  to  write  this  book  was  to  help,  so  far  as  his  abilities 
permitted,  in  withstanding  the  spread  of  the  prevailing  na¬ 
turalism,  which  is  daily  invading  more  and  more  our  homes, 
the  minds  and  lives  of  parents  as  well  as  of  children. 

If  we  can  preserve  the  Home  from  its  influence,  by  mak¬ 
ing  of  every  mother  a  supernatural  woman,  living  a  life  of 
faith,  loving  above  all  things  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice, 
fondly  attached  to  the  heroic  ways  and  virtues  of  our 

ancestors, — the  Home,  in  our  midst,  will  bring  forth  super- 

v 


vi 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 


natural  men  and  women,  unselfish,  pure,  truth-loving,  trust¬ 
worthy,  and  devoted  to  the  best  interests  of  country  and 
religion. 

What  is  attempted  here  may  encourage  others  to  pursue 
the  same  theme  with  far  better  prospects  of  success.  This 
holy  emulation  would  in  itself  reward  the  labor  bestowed 
on  this  book ;  and  who  knows  but,  imperfect  as  it  is,  it 
may  bring  happiness  to  more  than  one  hearth,  light  to  more 
than  one  mind,  and  nobler  aims  to  more  than  one  life  hith¬ 
erto  wasted  ?  It  is  not  only  the  ripe  fruits  which  Autumn 
pours  into  our  homes  that  are  treasured  by  young  and  old 
alike  ;  the  very  last  withered  leaves  which  the  storms  of 
this  dreary  November  weather  whirl  along  the  roadside,  or 
through  the  forest  wastes,  may  serve  as  a  welcome  couch  to 
the  benighted  wayfarer  or  the  homeless  outcast. 

And,  dear  reader,  do  not  quarrel  with  the  writer’s  me¬ 
thod.  A  book  written  for  pleasant  recreation,  as  well  as 
for  solid  instruction,  cannot  be  like  the  broad  surface  of  a 
royal  river  over  which  the  largest  and  the  smallest  craft  can 
move  together  without  hindrance  or  interruption.  Our  path, 
in  these  chapters,  lies  along  a  shallow  stream  amid  sylvan 
scenery  :  we  can  rest  in  the  noonday  heat  beneath  the  sha¬ 
dow  of  some  wooded  overhanging  crag,  stretching  our  limbs 
on  the  green  sward,  inhaling  the  fragrant  air,  and  soothed 
by  the  noisy  river  beneath  as  it  frets  and  foams  among  the 
rocks,  discoursing  the  while  on  the  Home  we  have  left,  and 
on  the  busy  world  toward  which  we  are  journeying.  Or, 
as  we  wend  our  way  later  along  shady  banks  where  the 
stream  glides,  noiseless  and  unruffled,  as  if  it  also  reposed 
after  a  toilsome  passage,  we  can  discuss  together  the  diffi¬ 
culties  of  life’s  road,  examine  the  grounds  of  our  hopes 
and  our  fears,  propose  in  turn  our  ideals  and  aims ;  and 
thus  beguiling  the  length  of  the  way,  forget  the  sultry 


THE  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 


•  • 

YU 

» 

weather,  and  the  flight  of  time,  till,  with  the  declining  sun, 
we  descry  afar  the  streamlet  joining  the  broad  river,  where 
the  river  itself  skirts  the  vast  and  crowded  city,  and  min-, 
gles  with  the  golden  expanse  of  the  vast  ocean  beyond. 

Enjoy  the  shady  and  restful  nooks  you  will  find  as  you 
proceed  from  chapter  to  chapter ;  open  your  eyes  to  the 
prospects  they  here  and  there  afford ;  and  if  they  prompt 
you,  in  looking  on  the  pleasant  earth  around,  or  in  gazing 
up  into  the  blue  heavens  overhead, — in  picking  up  the 
simple  flower  that  springs  by  the  wayside,  or  listening  to 
the  sweet  songsters  of  thicket  and  grove,  to  bless  the  Great 
Giver  of  all  that  is  good  and  beautiful, — you  will  be  grate¬ 
ful  to  your  guide  ere  your  journey’s  end. 

As  it  will  be  apparent  to  the  reader,  frequent  quotations 
have  been  borrowed  from  the  works  of  Kenelm  Digby, 
which  have  ever  been  especial  favorites  with  the  author. 
Nor  can  he  abstain  from  expressing  his  thanks  to  the  spir¬ 
ited  publisher,  who  spared  no  expense  in  securing  the  very 
highest  typographical  excellence  in  the  establishment  of 
J.  J.  Little  &  Co.,  of  this  city,  and  in  Mr.  J.  S.  King,  an 
engraver  whose  artistic  skill  will  be  admired  in  the  exquis- 
.  ite  plate  which  forms  the  frontispiece  to  our  Mirror  of 
True  Womanhood. 

i 

New  York,  November  the  25 th,  1877. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


Dedication 

• 

• 

PAGE 

.  iii 

Approbations 

• 

• 

iv 

Author’s  Preface . 

• 

• 

.  V 

Chapter  I. 

Introductory. 

Early  love  of  natural  beauty  .  1 

Early  love  of  supernatural  beauty  2 

The  bistory  of  boly  women  a  mir¬ 
ror  reflecting  tliat  beauty  .  .  2 

Tbe  Incarnate  God  tbe  First 
Model  :  next  to  bim  tbe  Blessed 

>  Mother . 3 

We,  tbeir  children,  bound  to  be 
like  to  them  ....  3 

Women,  by  nature,  are  prone  to  all 
that  is  most  heroic  ...  3 

This  book  written  for  home-life  .  4 

Especially  for  tbe  laborer’s  wife 
and  daughter  ....  4 

Chapter  II. 

The  True  Woman's  Kingdom:  the  Home. 

Sacredness  of  tbe  family  home  .  7 

Woman’s  love,  its  light  and 

warmth . 8 

Supernatural  virtues  in  the  Chris¬ 
tian  home  .....  9 

A  living  faith  ....  9 

How  Christian  mothers  can  imitate 
the  Blessed  Virgin  Mary  .  .  12 


PAGK 

Piety.  Purity  of  intention  .  .  14 

Illustrated  from  home-life  of  the 
early  Christians  ...  15 

Chapter  III. 

The  Home  Virtues — ( Continued ). 

Hospitality . 18 

Holiness . 20 

Innocence  of  conversation  .  .  ;  21 

What  the  home  ought  not  to  be  .  21 

Chapter  IV. 

How  the  Home  can  he  made  a  Paradise. 
Illustrated  by  the  life  of  St.  Mar¬ 
garet  of  Scotland  ...  23 

How  the  poor  man’s  home  is  made 
delightful  .....  28 

Unselfishness  in  the  wife  .  .  29 

Make  your  home  bright  and  sunny  31 

Dark  and  cheerless  homes  created 
by  selfishness  ....  32 

Sad  consequences  of  this  in  labor¬ 
ers’  homes  ....  33 

Consequences  in  a  wealthy  home  34 

Chapter  V. 

Further  Illustrations  of  Selfishness  and 
Unselfishness. 

The  example  of  St.  Elzear  and  his 
wife,  St.  Delphine  .  .  .38 

St.  John  Colombino  converted  by 
his  patient  wife  ....  39 


IX 


X 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Example  of  an  angelic  girl  :  Wliat 
she  did  for  lier  father  and 
brother  .....  40 

Contrary  example  :  How  a  young 
wife’s  selfishness  ruined  her 
home  and  her  husband  .  .  48 

*  Chapter  VI. 

The  Wife  in  the  Christian  Home. 


The  Christian  home  a  sanctuary 
blessed  by  the  Church  .  .  55 

Guarded  by  angels  ...  57 

Woman’s  duties  as  wife  .  .  57 

To  be  her  husband’s  companion  .  58 

To  be  her  husband’s  helpmate  .  59 

Help  in  the  wealthy  home  .  .  64 

Help  in  the  laborer’s  home  .  .  64 

To  be  her  husband’s  friend  and 
savior  .....  65 

Example  :  The  carpenter’s  wife  .  68 

The  chivalrous  service  and  obedi¬ 
ence  of  every  true-hearted  hus¬ 
band  to  his  wife  ...  73 

Chapter  VII. 


The  Wife  as  the  Treasurer  of  the  Home. 


Man’s  province  to  provide  for  the 
home  :  Woman’s  to  dispense  the 
treasures  of  the  home  .  .  75 

Economy  of  time  :  Order,  comfort, 

loveliness . 76 

Stewardship  of  the  wealthy  wife .  78 

Two  extremes  to  be  avoided  .  79 

She  dispenses  hospitality  .  .  80 

A  hospitable  spirit  illustrated  .  81 

Leon  du  Coudray’s  widowed  mo¬ 
ther  . 81 

An  American  wife ;  an  ideal 
home  .  ....  83 

The  wife  as  the  friend  of  the 

Poor . 87 

Spirit  of  charity  in  Catholic  coun¬ 
tries  . 88 

The  lofty  ideal  of  Catholic  Spain  89 
That  of  Catholic  Germany  St. 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary  .  .  91 


PAGE 

Habitual  practice  of  reverence 
recommended  in  the  home, 
and  toward  the  poor  ...  93 

Beautiful  example  of  a  French 
peasant  girl  ....  94 

Of  Frencli-Canadian  women  in 

1847  .  96 

Crowning  instance :  The  ship- 
carpenter’s  wife  ...  99 

Chapter  VIII. 

The  Wife's  Crowning  Duty  :  Fidelity. 

Solicitude  of  the  Church  for  the 
honor  of  the  home  .  .  .  104 

How  she  guarded  it  in  past  times  .  107 

Modern  legislation  destructive  of 
the  family  honor  .  .  .  108 

Conjugal  fidelity  illustrated  .  109 

Rebecca  .  .  .  .  .  110 

Judith . 110 

Anna,  the  Prophetess  .  .  .111 

Fidelity  to  the  living  intended 

here . 112 

Rules  :  Reserve  and  secrecy  .  113 
Friendships  that  are  baneful  .  114 
Remedies  in  danger  and  trial  .  115 

Imperative  necessity  of  superna¬ 
tural  virtue  to  women  sorely 

tried . 116 

Example  of  fidelity  :  The  child- 

wife  . . 117 

Vanity,  the  path  to  dishonor  .  123 

The  home-pleasures  which  are  a 

safeguard . 124 

Honor  the  tree  of  life  in  the  home 
p.aradise  .  ....  126 

„  Chapter  IX. 

The  Mother. 

Supernatural  methods  of  the  true 

mother . 128 

Share  of  the  Divine  Spirit  in  the 
work  of  education  .  .  .  132 

Other  qualities  in  the  mother’s 
government  .  .  .  .  135 

Consistency.  Perfect  truthful¬ 
ness  . 135 


\ 


CONTENTS. 


xi 


PAGE 

Happy  effects  of  early  habits  of 
truthfulness  ....  186 

Justice — Kindness — Gentleness  .  137 

Self-control  .  .  .  .  .  138 

Never  correct  in  a  passion  .  .  141 

Win  the  hearts  of  your  children  .  141 

Importance  of  this  .  .  .  143 

Chapter  X. 

The  Mother’s  Office  toward  Childhood. 

What  a  child  is  in  the  sight  of 

God . 146 

The  soul  of  childhood  .  .  .  147 

The  mind  of  childhood  .  .  149 

How  it  is  to  be  cultivated  :  A  beau¬ 
tiful  example  ....  149 
Joyousness  and  love  of  enjoy¬ 
ment  . 153 

How  nature  is  to  be  made  lovely 
to  the  child  ....  154 
Make  the  child  see  everywhere 
God  and  his  angels  .  .  .  156 

Never,  at  any  moment,  repel  your 

children . 157 

Faith  and  trust  in  a  mother’s 
love  are  the  breath  of  life  for 
her  children  ....  157 
The  mother  is  the  keeper  of  her 
children’s  hearts  .  .  .  158 

How  a  solid  religious  character  is 

built  up . 159 

Be  invariably  cheerful .  .  .  161 

Be  pitiless  toward  uncharitable¬ 
ness  . 161 

The  choice  of  baptismal  names  .  165 

Chapter  XI. 

A  Digression :  The  Homes  of  the  Old 
Country  and  of  the  Adopted  Country. 

How  to  account  for  many  diffi¬ 
culties  mothers  in  the  homes  of 
the  laborer  and  the  poor  man 
have  to  encounter  .  .  .171 

Homes  in  Ireland  .  .  .173 

Their  virtues  .  .  .  .174 


PAGE 

Education  in  these  homes  .  .175 

These  traditions  to  be  cherished 
in  the  new  homes  .  .  .  176 

Impossibility  of  preserving  the 
influence  surrounding  the  old 
home.  ...  .  .  .  177 

City  life  fatal  to  the  ancient  home 

influences . 179 

How  poor  mothers  might  be  aided 
by  their  wealthy  sisters  .  .  181 

Chapter  XII. 

The  Mother's  Office  toward  Boyhood  and 
Girlhood. 

The  boys  and  girls  in  the  la¬ 
borer’s  home  .  .  .  .184 

Courage  and  generosity  of  labor¬ 
ing  women  .  .  .  .185 

How  firmly  they  can  count  on 
Christ’s  assistance  .  .  .  186 

Other  treasures  found  in  such 

homes . 108 

Their  children  to  be  taught  the 
dignity  of  labor.  .  .  .189 

To  be  kept  joyous  .  .  .190 

To  be  stimulated  by  praise  .  .  190 

Their  mother  should  be  gentle, 
low-voiced,  and  patient  .  .  191 

What  kind  of  independence  they 
are  to  be  given  ....  193 

Extreme  care  in  choosing  compa¬ 
nions  for  them  .  .  .194 

“  The  Two  Nests  ”  .  .  .  195 

Chapter  XIII. 

Formation  of  Boyhood  and  Girlhood — 

( Continued ). 

Simplicity  in  dress  and  sobriety 

in  food . 198 

/ 

Sense  of  duty  to  be  inculcated 

very  early . 199 

And  sedulously  cultivated  .  .  300 

Cultivate  the  hearts  of  your  chil¬ 
dren  . 301 

Children  are  not  born  but  made 
heartless . 303 


Xll 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Heartlessness  is  but  full-blown 

selfishness . 204 

Examples  of  heartlessness  :  A 
heartless  girl  .  .  .  .  205 

A  heartless  wife  and  husband  .  207 

Terrible  end  of  a  heartless  mis¬ 
tress  . 212 

Chapter  XIV. 

Culture  of  the  Heart— {Continued). 

The  rich  treasures  and  mighty 
moral  forces  undeveloped  in 
the  heart  of  youth  .  .  .  217 

Even  in  the  hearts  of  the  poor  .  217 

Instance  :  Madame  Barat,  found¬ 
ress  of  the  Ladies  of  the  Sacred 

Heart . 217 

Education  a  creation  .  .  .  220 

Create  in  the  heart  of  childhood 
and  boyhood  generosity  in  con¬ 
quering  self  ....  222 

Generosity  in  the  exercise  of  the 
home-charities  ....  224 
Reverence  and  devotion  toward 
sick  parents  and  others  .  .  224 

Forbearance  toward  the  aged  and 

infirm . 228 

Generosity  in  forgetting  one’s 
aches  to  please  others  .  .  229 

A  beautiful  instance  of  it  .  230 

Generosity  in  practicing  the  out¬ 
door  charities  .  .  .  .233 

A  patriarchal  family  and  its  char¬ 
ities  . 234 

A  terrible  lesson  .  .  .  .  235 

Make  not  the  bread  of  hospitality 
bitter  .....  236 

Chapter  XV. 

Special  Training  for  Girls  and  Boys. 

I. 

What  is  special  in  the  training  of 

girls . 240 

Simplicity  in  dress  .  .  .  243 

Suitability  in  dress  not  extrava¬ 
gance  . 244 


PAG* 

Passion  for  dress  and  passion  for 
light  reading  ....  247 
What  girls  should  read  .  .  247 

Special  religious  topics  :  Modern 

errors . 249 

What  girls  should  not  read  .  251 
Objects  of  art  :  Exceeding  care  in 
their  choice  ....  252 
Spanish  painting  possesses  the 
true  Christian  ideal  .  .  .  253 

Teach  them  the  value  of  time  .  254 
Minutes  the  golden  sands  of 

time . 257 

“  Odd  moments  ”  and  their  use  .  258 

Practices  of  devotion :  Careful 
choice  of  them  ....  260 

Their  significance  to  be  carefully 

explained . 260 

The  mother’s  guidance  with  re¬ 
spect  to  matrimony  .  .  .  261 

With  respect  to  vocations  to  reli¬ 
gious  life . 263 

II. 

Special  care  needed  in  educating 

boys . 264 

Ground  them  in  true  piety, — the 
foundation  of  true  manliness  .  265 

The  spirit  of  Christian  chivalry  266 
It  is  the  ideal  of  true  manhood  .  267 

Its  characteristics  :  The  oath  and 
rules  of  chivalry  .  .  .  269 

Fearlessness  in  the  cause  of 
Truth  :  St.  Columbanus  ^  .  271 

“  Be  the  Soldier  of  Truth  !  No 
Struggle,  no  Crown  !  No  Lib¬ 
erty,  no  Honor  or  Dignity  !  ”  .  273 

Other  traits  of  Christian  chivalry  274 
Teach  your  sons  to  be  their  sis¬ 
ters’  willing  servants  .  .  275 

Home-bred  courtesy, — its  neces¬ 
sity  and  value  ....  276 

Noble  courtesy  of  Catholic  coun¬ 
try-folk  . 277 

In  Portugal . 277 

In  Spain . 278 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Do  not  allow  your  daughters  to 
make  themselves  their  brothers’ 

servants . 279 

Let  your  home  be  the  center  of 
amusement  for  your  sons  .  .281 

Be  their  constant  companion  in 
their  outdoor  amusements  .  282 

What  a  divine  work  the  education 
of  a  single  child  is  .  .  .  282 

One  easy  to  the  poor  mother  .  283 

And  easy  to  the  wealthy  mother  .  284 

A  poor  mother  and  her  two  noble 

orphans . 285 

Let  your  sons  be  God-fearing  and 
self-reliant  ....  288 
The  profession  of  truth ;  and 

truth  in  our  actions  .  .  .  290 

,  -  v  •  / 

Chapter  XVI. 

Duties  toward  Parents  and  Servants. 

I. 

The  ancient  patriarchal  authority 
still  a  living  institution  .  .  292 

Filial  piety  the  religion  of  sweet¬ 
est  gratitude  ....  293 
Taught  by  civilized  pagan  na¬ 
tions  . 293 

How  necessary  in  the  New  World  295 
Kindness  to  parents-in-law  .  .  296 

A  heroic  example  .  .  .  297 

II. 

The  Christian  idea  of  service  .  301 
Win  your  servants’  hearts  .  .  303 

The  Catholic  Golden  Kule :  Do 
them  all  the  good  you  can, — and 
make  them  as  good  as  you  can  304 
Lofty  views  of  duty  in  Catholic 

Spain . 307 

Care  of  servants’  souls  in  Catholic 

countries . 307 

“  If  you  would  be  loved,  love.”  .  309 
The  tie  of  household  charity  loos¬ 
ened  in  modern  society  .  .  310 

How  the  kindness  and  charity  of 
Christian  women  can  prevent 
socialism  and  communism.  .  311 


XIII 

PAGE 

Unite  a  motherly  interest  with 

reserve . 313 

Encourage  them  to  consult  you 
and  trust  in  you  .  .  .  313 

Do  not  judge  them  hastily  .  .  314 

Try  to  make  them  comfortable,  to 
refine  and  elevate  them  .  .  314 

Do  not  overburden  them  with 

work . 315 

In  sickness  care  for  them  tenderly  316 
Praise  them  generously,  but  j  ustly  317 
How  servants  repay  kindness  .  319 

Chapter  XVII. 

Obstacles  to  the  right  Government  of  the 
Home. 

The  ideal  home,  which  united 
hearts  and  wills  create  .  .  321 

The  Beatrix  of  Dante  is  the 
Church,  the  sanctifier,  and  sa¬ 
vior  of  man  :  such  is  the  wife 
in  the  home  ....  322 
Make  your  home  an  hereditary 

home . 323 

Obstacles  to  the  wife’s  good  gov¬ 
ernment  . 325 

In  the  wealthy  home  .  .  .  327 

In  the  poor  home  ....  331 

Chapter  XVIII. 

The  Mistress  of  the  Home  and  her 
Social  Duties. 

Twofold  meaning  of  the  word 
“Society”  ....  334 
The  “  Woman  of  the  World”  and 
the  “  Worldly  Woman  ”  .  .  335 

Need  of  true  Christian  women 
in  the  world  .  .  .  .338 

Importance  of  their  social  duties  .  339 
Good  effected  by  such  women  in 

Europe . 340 

In  America . 341 

Charity  and  religion  promoted  by 
social  gatherings  .  .  .  342 

Influence  of  a  true  woman  over  a 
degenerate  society  :  Example  .  345 


XIV 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Social  virtues  of  American  women  348 
Work  of  tlie  woman  of  tlie  world 
outside  of  lier  home  .  .  .  349 

Part  of  the  working-man’s  wife  .  351 

How  the  good  work  together  .  352 

Chapter  XIX. 

Maidenhood. 

Girlhood  of  the  Virgin  Mother, 
its  model  .....  356 

Her  public  life,  a  guide  for  the 
trials  of  womanhood  .  .  .  357 

Girls  reared  in  affluence  and 
forced  to  labor  ....  359 

Resolution  and  fortitude  of 
American  women  .  ...  359 

Superior  virtue  developed  in  ad¬ 
versity  :  Instances  .  .  .  361 

low  this  superiority  was  sorely 

tested . 362 

leroism  of  Southern  women  .  363 

'ruelty  of  Federal  officials  .  .  364 

row  ladies  filling  Federal  offices 
should  regulate  their  conduct  367 
^ady  companions :  Their  hard 


lot . 370 

Guidance  for  them  .  .  .  371 

An  ideal  example  of  their  influ¬ 
ence  . 372 

Governesses  :  An  example  illus¬ 
trating  two  different  classes  .  380 

Rules  for  the  direction  of  govern¬ 
esses  . 388 

School-teachers  :  They  must  be 
guided  by  the  same  rules  .  397 

Thorough  training  needed  :  Nor¬ 
mal  schools  in  England  .  .  397 

In  Canada  .....  398 

Not  to  be  satisfied  with  a  low 
standard  of  excellence  .  .  398 

Should  be  well  remunerated  .  399 
Special  advice  to  teachers  .  .  400 


Chapter  XX. 

The  Toilers  of  the  Shop  and  the  Loom . 

PAGE 

The  divine  comforts  of  poverty 

and  toil . 403 

Toilers  in  the  shop  :  Their  abject 
servitude  .  .  .  .  .  405 

Hard  lot  of  dress-makers  .  .  407 

Advice  to  dress-makers  and  sales¬ 
women . 408 

Woman  in  manufactures  .  .  411 

The  brilliant  side  of  modern  in¬ 
dustry  . 4ll 

Its  hideous  side  ....  413 

Godless  and  conscienceless  indus- 

0 

try  a  foul  plague-spot  .  .  414 

The  armies  of  women  toilers  :  In 

America . 416 

In  Europe . 417 

Social  outlook  ....  417 

The  Ancient  Church  the  helper 

of  women . 418 

Appeal  against  heartless  industry  418 
It  cuts  down  the  tree  to  gather 

the  fruit . 419 

It  destroys  the  child,  the  woman, 
and  the  home  ....  419 
A  European  statesman  on  factory 

women . 420 

Was  the  ideal  of  the  Puritans  a 
great  industrial  manufacturing 
people, — or  a  nation  of  farmers 
and  seamen  ?  422 

The  unlimited  extension  of  indus¬ 
try  a  political,  economical,  and 
social  blunder  ....  424 

Remedial  measures  from  religion  425 

Chapter  XXI. 

Duties  of  Servants.  .  .  .  435 

Chapter  XXII. 

Supplementary  ....  459 


THE  MIRROR 


OP 

True  Womanhood. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

Omnis  honos,  omnis  admiratio,  omne  studium  ad  mrtutem,  et  ad  eas  actiones 
qucB  virtuti  sunt  consentanece  refertur. 

All  honor,  admiration,  and  zealous  endeavor  is  referred  to  virtue  and  to  the 
actions  which  are  conformable  to  it. — Cicero. 

It  is  said  of  one  of  the  most  celebrated  men  of  the  last 
century,  that,  when  a  mere  babe,  he  was  made  to  love  flow¬ 
ers  and  all  beautiful  things  in  nature.  His  father,  a  dis¬ 
tinguished  naturalist,  would  take  the  child  with  him  into 
the  garden,  and  while  he  was  busied  watering  the  plants 
and  examining  how  it  fared  with  each  of  them,  he  would 
place  in  the  child’ s  hands  and  on  his  lap  bunches  of  the  most 
lovely  dowers.  Whether  or  not  it  was  an  inbred  disposi¬ 
tion  in  the  child,  he  would — so  the  story  or  his  life  relates 
— amuse  himself  with  the  bright  and  fragrant  things,  ad¬ 
miring  and  studying  them  more  and  more  as  he  grew  up, 
till  this  pursuit  became  an  irresistible  fascination  ;  and  thus, 
from  botany  to  other  departments  of  natural  science,  the 
student  progressed,  revealing  to  his  fellow-men  the  wonders 
that  he  had  discovered,  and  leaving  behind  him  an  immor¬ 
tal  name.* 


*  Linnaeus,  or  Carl  von  Linne,  born  in  1707,  died  in  1778. 

1  1 


i 


2  THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 

Even  so  is  it  possible  to  place  in  the  hands  and  keep  be¬ 
fore  the  eyes  of  childhood  some  of  the  loveliest  and  most 
fragrant  flowers  of  goodness,  purity,  and  heroism  which 
bloom  innumerable  in  the  Church  of  God,  and  thereby 
awaken  in  the  innocent  soul  the  sense  of  moral  beauty,  till 
the  study  and  pursuit  of  all  that  is  ennobling  and  elevating 
becomes  an  absorbing  passion. 

And  talking  of  flowers,  we  are  reminded  of  the  story  of 
that  demented  youth  preserved  among  the  graceful  fictions 
of  ancient  Greece.  He  was  a  simple  child,  and  would  wan¬ 
der  away  into  the  neighboring  woods  and  along  the  pleasant 
banks  of  streams.  One  day  as  he  stooped  down  to  drink 
from  the  deep,  smooth  current  of  one  of  them,  he  beheld  his 
own  face  in  the  crystal  mirror,  and  forthwith  became  enam¬ 
ored  of  the  fair  apparition,  which  he  mistook  for  an  inhab¬ 
itant  of  the  waters.  And  his  passion  and  his  madness  grew 
apace,  vainly  appealing  to  the  image  which  gazed  up  into 
his  eyes,  for  words  of  love  in  answer  to  his  own,  till  he 
pined  away  and  died  ;  and  from  him  the  beautiful  flower 
Narcissus  derives  its  name. 

But  in  the  deep,  pure,  and  never-deceiving  mirror  formed 
by  that  bright,  broad  river  of  holiness  of  life,  which  springs 
in  Paradise  from  beneath  the  throne  of  Christ,  and  flows 
down  through  the  ages  to  us, — glorious  figures  appear  with 
which  it  will  be  no  madness  to  fall  in  love.  For,  to  love 
them,  to  study  their  beauty,  to  imitate  their  loveliness,  to 
become  like  to  them  in  thought  and  feeling  and  word  and 
deed,— is  to  become  most  truly  the  children  of  God. 

In  the  Eternal  Son  of  God  become  for  our  sakes  the  Son 
of  the  Virgin  Mary,  we  have  the  Author  of  our  nature  living 
on  earth,  and  displaying  in  His  life  the  virtues  which  can 
make  every  child  born  of  woman  most  like  to  Himself,  who 
is  at  one  and  the  same  time  our  adorable  model  and  our 
judge.  Generosity,  devotedness,  self-sacrifice  are  the  char¬ 
acteristic  virtues  of  woman :  in  Him  they  shine  forth  with 
surpassing  splendor  ;  and,  next  to  Him,  the  Blessed  Mother, 
— so  near  and  dear  to  Him, — is  the  most  perfect  mirror  of 
womanly  perfection.  She  is  the  “  Woman  clothed  with  the 


INTRODUCTORY. 


3 


Sun.”*  She  gave  him  the  sacred  body  in  which  He  prac¬ 
ticed  the  sweet  human  virtues  befitting  childhood,  boyhood, 
and  manhood, — the  deeds  which  graced  the  lowly  home  of 
Joseph  and  Mary  at  Nazareth,  and  those  which  adorned  the 
three  years  of  his  public  life,  till  His  work  was  consummated 
on  the  cross.  Enlightened  and  warmed  by  this  close  and 
continual  union  with  Him,  who  is  the  true  Sun  of  Holiness, 
during  the  thirty  years  of  intimacy  at  Nazareth, — this  Mo¬ 
ther,  blessed  among  women,  could  not  help  reflecting  more 
perfectly  than  any  other  human  being  the  thoughts,  the 
aims,  the  sentiments, — the  humility  and  the  self-sacrificing 
charity  of  her  divine  Son.  Thus  her  life  was  invested  from 
this  most  privileged  intimacy,  with  such  a  light  of  supernat¬ 
ural  holiness,  that  it  vividly  pictured  the  life  of  Jesus.  She 
had  been  closest,  nearest,  and  dearest  to  Him,  had  studied 
Him  most  attentively  and  lovingly,  had  followed  faithfully 
in  His  footsteps  from  the  manger  to  the  cross,  and  was, 
when  He  ascended  to  heaven,  the  living  image  of  her  cruci¬ 
fied  love  to  all  who  believed  in  His  Name. 

We  are  all  the  children  of  these  great  parents,  and  are 
therefore  bound  to  become  like  to  them  in  mind  and  heart 
and  conduct.  None  can  attain  to  the  eternal  glory  of  the 
children  of  God  in  the  life  to  come,  but  such  as  will  have 
acquired  this  living  likeness  by  generosity  in  imitating 
God’s  incarnate  Son.f  # 

It  is  precisely  because  women  are,  by  the  noble  instincts 
which  God  has  given  to  their  nature,  prone  to  all  that  is 
most  heroic,  that  this  book  has  been  written  for  them.  It 
aims  at  setting  before  their  eyes  such  admirable  examples 
of  every  virtue  most  suited  to  their  sex  in  every  age  and 
condition  of  life,  that  they  have  only  to  open  its  pages  in 
order  to  learn  at  a  glance,  what  graces  and  excellences  ren¬ 
der  girlhood  as  bright  and  fragrant  as  the  Garden  of  God 
in  its  unfading  bloom,  and  ripe  womanhood  as  glorious  and 
peerless  in  its  loveliness  and  power,  as  the  May  moon  in 
her  perfect  fullness,  when  she  reigns  alone  over  the  starry 
heavens. 


*  Apocalypse  xii.  1. 


f  Komans  viii.  29. 


4 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Nor  is  it  for  women  secluded  in  tlie  cloister,  or  conse¬ 
crated  by  religious  vows  to  the  pursuit  of  perfection  and 
the  sole  love  of  Christ  and  His  poor,  that  our  teachings  are 
intended.  It  is  for  home-life — the  home-life  of  the  artisan 
and  the  lowliest  laborer,  much  more  than  that  of  the  lordly 
and  wealthy — that  this  little  book  is  calculated  to  bear  sweet 
fruits  of  manifold  blessedness  and  utility. 

Religious  Communities  are  so  favored,  in  return  for  their 
generous  devotion  to  the  Divine  Majesty,  by  graces  so  lavish 
and  so  extraordinary  and  by  so  exceptional  a  culture,  that 
they  resemble  those  royal  gardens  in  which  bloom  the 
whole  year  round  all  the  rarest  plants,  and  most  exquisite 
flowers  of  every  clime.  But  it  is  the  wife  or  daughter  of 
the  man  of  toil,  crushed  beneath  her  load  of  care  and 
fatigue,  or  cooped  up  by  night  between  the  narrow  walls  of 
an  unsavory  dwelling  in  a  crowded  neighborhood, — that  we 
would  fain  teach  how  to  rear  in  the  little  garden  of  her 
soul  those  flowers  of  paradise,  which  will  make  her  a  spec¬ 
tacle  to  angels  and  to  men. 

Among  the  latest  heroines  of  sanctity  those  women  who 
shine  at  long  intervals  of  hundreds  of  years,  throwing  into 
the  shade  the  brightness  of  very  many  of  their  contempo¬ 
raries — like  stars  of  surpassing  brilliancy  in  some  beautiful 
cluster  in  the  firmament — is  a  poor  little  peasant-girl,  St. 
Germaine  Cousin,  canonized  with  such  extraordinary  solem¬ 
nity  on  June  29th,  1S67.  Farther  on,  we  shall  examine  mere 
leisurely  the  figure  of  this  little  French  shepherdess,  whose 
life,  amid  the  mountain  solitudes  of  Southern  France,  was 
made  so  bitter  by  a  stepmother’s  cruelty,  but  whose  soul 
soared  above  the  hardships  of  her  condition,  to  heights  of 
holiness  unknown  to  the  great,  the  rich,  the  learned  in  her 
own  day. 

How  many  souls  will  look  into  these  pages,  who  have  it 
in  their  power,  with  His  aid  who  yearns  to  help  us  toward 
the  acquisition  of  all  goodness  and  the  most  blessed  fruits 
of  all  spiritual  joy,  to  rise  to  these  same  heights  of  true 
womanly  greatness,  to  that  near  resemblance  to  Christ  and 
to  her  who  is  the  Queen  of  all  saints  ?  We  cannot  say.  But 


INTRODUCTORY, . 


5 


this  much  is  certain — that  the  living  lessons  reflected  from 
their  reading  must  enable  every  heart  which  tries  to  under¬ 
stand  them,  to  be  better,  stronger,  braver,  truer,  even  from 
looking,  for  a  few  moments,  on  the  angelic  features  of  any 
one  of  the  heroic  women  reflected  in  our  Mieeoe. 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  TEUE  WOMAN’S  KINGDOM — THE  HOME. 

Who  is  not  struck  with  beholding  your  lively  faith  ;  your  piety  full  of 
sweetness  and  modesty  ;  your  generous  hospitality  ;  the  holiness  which  reigns 
within  your  families  ;  the  serenity  and  innocence  of  your  conversation  ? — St. 
Clement,  Pope  and  Martyr,  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians. 

We  are  about  to  describe  tbe  sacred  sphere  within  which 
God  has  appointed  that  true  women  should  exercise  their 
sway,  that  most  blessed  kingdom  which  it  is  in  their  power 
to  create,  and  over  which  the  Author  of  every  most  perfect 
gift  will  enable  them  to  reign  with  an  influence  as  undis¬ 
puted  as  it  may  be  boundless  for  all  good.  The  home  of 
the  Christian  family,  such  as  the  Creator  wills  it  to  be,  and 
such  as  every  true  woman  can  make  it, — is  not  only  the 
home  of  the  wealthy  and  the  powerf  ul,  but  more  especially 
still  that  of  the  poor  and  the  lowly.  For,  these  constitute 
the  immense  majority  of  mankind,  and  must  ever  be  the 
chief  object  of  his  care  who  is  Father  and  Lord  over  all. 
From  him  spring  the  laws  which  regulate  all  the  sweet 
duties  of  family  life,  and  the  graces  which  enable  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  a  household  to  make  of  their  abode  a  paradise. 

Hence  it  is,  that  when  the  Author  of  our  nature  deigned 
to  become  man  and  to  subject  himself  to  these  same  laws 
and  duties,  he  chose  not  a  palace  for  his  abode,  nor  a  life 
of  wealthy  ease,  while  upon  earth,  but  the  poor  home  of  an 
artisan,  and  the  life  of  toil  and  hardship  which  is  the  lot  of 
the  multitude.  It  was  a  most  blissful  design,  worthy  of  the 
infinite  wisdom  and  goodness.  The  human  parents  he 

6 


THE  FAMILY  HOME. 


7 


chose  were  of  royal  blood,  that  the  highest  on  earth  might 
learn  from  Joseph  and  Mary  how  holiness  can  exalt  princes 
to  nearness  to  God,  and  how  the  most  spotless  purity  can 
be  the  parent  of  a  regenerated  world.  And  he  made  all 
his  human  virtues  bloom  in  the  carpenter’s  home  at  Naza¬ 
reth,  in  order  that  the  poorest  laborer  might  know  that 
there  is  not  one  sweet  virtue  practiced  by  the  God-Man, 
Jesus,  which  the  last  and  hardest  driven  of  the  sons  and 
daughters  of  toil  may  not  cultivate  in  their  own  homes, 
though  never  so  poor,  so  naked,  or  so  narrow. 

So,  dear  reader,  standing  on  the  shore  of  the  calm  and 
beautiful  Lake  of  Galilee,  near  which  our  Lord  was  reared, 
let  us  see  his  humble  home  and  his  home-life  reflected 
therein,  as  in  a  most  beautiful  mirror  ;  and  with  that  divine 
image  compare  our  own  home,  and  the  life  with  which  we 
study  to  adorn  it. 

There  is  nothing  here  below  more  sacred  in  the  eyes  of 
that  good  God  who  governs  all  things,  and  will  judge  all 
men  in  due  time,  than 

THE  FAMILY  HOME. 

All  the  institutions  and  ordinances  which  God  has  created 
in  civil  society  or  bestowed  upon  his  Church,  have  for  their 
main  purpose  to  secure  the  existence,  the  honor,  and  the 
happiness  of  every  home  in  the  community,  from  that  of 
the  sovereign  or  supreme  magistrate  to  that  of  the  most  ob¬ 
scure  individual  who  labors  to  rear  a  family.  There  is 
nothing  on  earth  which  the  Creator  and  Lord  of  all  things 
holds  more  dear  than  this  home,  in  which  a  father’s  ever- 
watchful  care,  untiring  labor,  and  enlightened  love  aim  at 
creating  for  his  children  a  little  Eden,  in  which  they  may 
grow  up  to  the  true  perfection  of  children  of  God  ;  in  which 
a  mother’ s  unfailing  and  all-embracing  tenderness  will  be, 
like  the  light  and  warmth  of  the  sun  in  the  heavens,  the 
source  of  life  and  joy  and  strength  and  all  goodness  to  her 
dear  ones,  as  well  as  to  all  who  come  within  the  reach  of 
her  influence. 


8 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


The  most  learned  men  of  modern  times  agree  in  saying, 
that  tlie  sun’s  light  and  warmth  are,  in  the  order  established 
by  the  Creator,  the  sources  of  all  vegetable  and  animal  life 
on  the  surface  of  our  globe.  They  regulate  the  succession 
of  seasons,  the  growth  of  all  the  wonderful  varieties  of  tree 
and  shrub  and  flower  and  grass  that  make  of  the  surface 
of.  the  earth  an  image  of  Paradise.  They  give  health  and 
vigor  to  the  myriads  of  animals  of  every  kind  that  live  in 
the  air  or  in  the  waters  or  on  the  dry  land,  and  to  which, 
in  turn,  the  vegetable  world  furnishes  food  and  sustenance. 
The  very  motion  given  to  the  rain  in  falling,  to  the  rivers  in 
their  course,  to  the  oceans  and  their  currents,  comes  from 
that  sun-force, — as  well  as  the  clouds  which  sail  above  our 
heads  in  the  firmament  and  the  lovely  colors  which  paint 
them.  Nay,  there  is  not  a  single  beauty  in  the  million- 
million  shades  which  embellish  the  flowers  of  grove  or  gar¬ 
den  or  field,  or  clothe,  at  dawn  or  noontide  or  sunset,  the 
face  of  earth  and  heaven,  which  is  not  a  creation  of  glorious 
light,  the  visible  image  of  His  divine  countenance  in  whom 
is  the  source  of  all  splendor  and  life  and  beauty. 

Even  so,  O  woman,  within  that  world  which  is  your  home 
and  kingdom,  your  face  is  to  light  up  and  brighten  and 
beautify  all  things,  and  your  heart  is  to  be  the  source  of  • 
that  vital  fire  and  strength  without  which  the  father  can  be 
no  true  father,  the  brother  no  true  brother,  the  sister  no 
true  sister, — since  all  have  to  learn  from  you  how  to  love, 
how  to  labor  lovingly,  how  to  be  forgetful  of  self,  and  mind¬ 
ful  only  of  the  welfare  of  others. 

The  natural  affection  by  which  the  Creator  of  our  souls 
draws  to  each  other  husband  and  wife,  and  which,  in  turn, 
they  pour  out  on  their  children  and  receive  back  from  these 
in  filial  regard  and  reverence,  is  the  very  source  of  domestic 
happiness.  We  cannot  estimate  too  highly  this  holy  mu¬ 
tual  love  which  knits  together  the  hearts  of  parents  and 
children.  It  is  as  necessary  to  the  peace,  the  comfort,  the 
prosperity,  and  the  bliss  of  every  home,  as  the  dew  and  the 
rain  and  the  streams  of  running  water  are  necessary  to  the 
husbandman  for  the  fertility  of  the  land  he  cultivates  and 


SUPERNATURAL  ATMOSPHERE  OF  TEE  HOME. 


9 


the  growth  of  the  harvest  on  which  depend  both  his  sub¬ 
sistence  and  his  wealth. 

Let  the  dew  and  rain  of  heaven  cease  to  fall  on  the  fairest 
valley,  let  the  springs  of  living  water  be  dried  up  all  over 
its  bosom,  and  the  rivers  which  brighten  and  fertilize  it 
cease  to  flow  but  for  a  few  seasons,  and  it  will  be  like  the 
vale  of  death,  forsaken  of  every  living  thing. 

Do  you  wish,  O  reader,  to  learn  how  the  springs  of  true 
life,  of  true  love  and  joy,  may  flow,  unfailing  and  eternal, 
within  the  little  paradise  of  your  home  ?  Then  weigh  well 
the  words  of  the  great  Martyr-Pope  placed  at  the  head  of 
this  chapter.  These  point  out  the  virtues  and  qualities 
which  should  adorn  every  household  in  which  Christ  is 
worshiped : — a  lively  faith,  a  piety  full  of  sweetness  and 
modesty,  a  generous  hospitality ;  holiness  of  life,  serenity 
and  innocence  of  conversation.  Let  us  examine  together 
how  much  there  is  in  every  one  of  these.  We  need  not 
send  to  a  great  distance  for  one  of  those  men  famed  for 
their  skill  in  discovering  hidden  and  plentiful  springs  of 
water  beneath  the  surface  of  the  ground.  Their  mysterious 
knowledge  and  the  use  of  their  magic  wand  are  useless  here. 
For,  here  we  have  seven  pure  and  exhaustless  wells  of  liv¬ 
ing  water,  created  for  our  home  by  the  Maker  of  all  tilings, 
and  placed  ready  to  our  hand  for  every  need. 

And,  first  of  all,  is  a  lively  faith.  We  Christians  are 
given  that  eye  of  the  soul  which  enables  us  to  see  the  in¬ 
visible  world,  as  if  the  vail  which  hides  it  were  withdrawn. 
God  becomes  to  us  an  ever-present,  most  sweet  and  most 
comforting  reality.  The  great  patriarch,  Abraham,  was 
bidden,  in  his  long  exile,  and  as  a  sure  means  of  bearing  up 
against  his  manifold  trials,  to  walk  before  God, — that  is,  to 
have  God  ever  present  before  the  eye  of  his  soul.  This 
sense  of  the  Divine  Majesty  as  a  vision  always  accompanying 
us  in  our  every  occupation,  in  labor  as  well  as  repose — just 
as  the  pillar  of  cloud  wunt  with  the  Israelites  in  their  jour- 
neyings  toward  the  Promised  Land — gives  wonderful  light 
to  us  in  our  darkness  and  difficulties,  cheers  us  marvelously 
in  distress  and  adversity,  lightens  the  hardest  labor  and  the 


10 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


most  intolerable  burden,  imparts  a  divine  strength  in  the 
hour  of  temptation  ; — for,  what  can  we  not  undertake  and 
accomplish,  what  enemy  can  we  not  resist  and  put  to 
flight,  when  we  feel  that  His  eye  is  on  us,  that  we  have  him 
there  face  to  face,  that  his  arm  is  ever  stretched  out  to  sup¬ 
port  and  to  shield  us,  and  that  all  the  love  of  his  fatherly 
heart  sweetens  the  bitterness  of  our  struggle,  and  rewards 
our  generosity  in  overcoming  all  for  his  sake  % 

Joseph  and  Mary  at  Nazareth  were  privileged  above  all 
human  beings  to  behold  that  Wisdom  which  created  the 
world  living  and  laboring  daily  beneath  their  humble  roof, 
and  growing  up  into  the  successive  perfection  of  holy  infan¬ 
cy,  boyhood,  and  manhood,  while  concealing  his  quality 
from  the  surrounding  multitude,  and  revealing  only  to  a 
few  like  themselves  his  Godhead  and  his  mission.  It  is 
certain,  that  he  practiced  all  the  virtues  and  fulfilled  all 
the  duties  of  his  age  and  station  in  the  way  best  fitted  to 
glorify  his  Father :  he  was  enlightening  the  world,  sancti¬ 
fying  himself,  and  marking  out  the  path  of  life  as  truly  for 
every  one  of  us,  during  these  long  and  obscure  years  of  his 
abode  in  Nazareth,  as  when  his  teaching  and  his  miracles 
drew  around  him  all  Galilee  and  Judsea. 

And  what  an  eloquent  lesson  was  there,  exemplifying 
that  “'life  of  faith,”  without  which  the  existence  of  the 
Christian  man  or  woman  is  barren  of  all  supernatural  merit ! 
Christ,  in  the  helpless  years  of  his  infancy  and  boyhood, 
when  his  life  was  one  of  entire  dependence  and  submission, 
glorified  and  pleased  his  Father  by  solely  seeking  his  good, 
will  and  pleasure  in  obeying  those  appointed  his  earthly 
parents,  and  in  accomplishing  the  obscure  duties  of  his  age. 
This  lesson  Mary  and  Joseph  were  not  slow  to  learn  and  to 
practice.  They  read  in  the  rapt  charity  with  which  their 
worshiped  Charge  offered  to  the  Divine  Majesty  every  day 
and  hour  and  moment  of  these  golden  years  of  humility 
and  toil, — this  all-important  law  of  life  for  the  children  of 
God :  4  That  the  value  of  what  we  do  does  not  depend  on 
the  greatness  or  publicity  of  the  work  accomplished ;  but 
on  the  spirit  of  love  toward  the  Father  with  which  it  is 


MODEL  HOME  OF  NAZARETH. 


11 


undertaken  and  carried  out ;  and  that  the  pure  purpose  and 
offering  of  the  heart  is  what  God  prizes  above  all  else.’ 

It  has  been  the  constant  belief  and  teaching  of  Christian 
ages  that  the  lives  of  Joseph  and  Mary  consumed  in  the 
voluntary  poverty,  lowliness,  and  toil  of  their  condition, 
were  ennobled,  elevated,  sanctified,  and  made  most  precious 
before  God  by  being — after  the  example  of  the  Divine  Model 
before  them — devoted  to  God  alone,  and  animated  by  the 
one  sole  thought  and  purpose  of  pleasing  and  glorifying 
him  by  perfect  conformity  to  his  holy  will. 

The  Mother  who  ruled  in  this  most  blessed  home,  beheld 
in  the  Divine  Babe  confided  to  her,  the  Incarnate  Son  of 
God  walking  before  her  in  the  true  way  of  holiness,  and, 
like  him,  she  applied  herself  to  set  the  Eternal  Father  con¬ 
stantly  before  her  eyes,  studying  to  make  every  thought 
and  aim  and  word  and  action  most  pleasing  to  that  Infinite 
Perfection. 

When  Christ  had  begun  his  public  life,  when  the  home  at 
Nazareth  was  broken  up,  and  Mary  had  taken  up  her  abode 
with  her  kinsfolk  at  Capharnaum,  the  light  of  the  Father’ s 
countenance,  in  which  she  had  learned  to  live,  accompa¬ 
nied  her,  and  the  grace  of  her  Son’ s  example  continued  to 
surround  her  like  a  living  atmosphere.  After  the  terrible 
scenes  of  Calvary  and  the  glories  of  the  ascension,  she 
brought  with  her  to  the  home  which  St.  John  and  his 
mother,  Mary  Salome,  so  lovingly  offered  her,  the  image  of 
her  Crucified  Love,  as  the  one  great  mirror  in  which  she 
could  behold  the  new  heights  of  sanctity  and  self-sacrifice 
which  she  was  called  on  to  tread  with  him. 

Since  her  day  who  was  Mother  of  our  Head,  Mother  of 
the  Church  which  she  labored  to  beget  and  to  form,  and 
Mother  of  us  all — since  she  quitted  her  home  on  earth  for 
heaven — the  image  of  the  Crucified  God  has  ever  been  the 
chief  ornament,  the  principal  light,  and  the  great  Book  of 
Life  in  every  true  Christian  home. 

Not  one  saintly  mother  among  the  millions  who  have 
trained  sons  and  daughters,  ay,  and  husbands  and  depend¬ 
ents,  to  be  the  true  followers  of  Christ,  his  apostles  and 


12 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


liis  martyrs,  when  need  was — but  always  his  faithful  ser¬ 
vants  and  imitators ; — who  did  not  read  in  the  ever  open 
page  of  her  crucifix,  how  she  might  best  lead  a  life  of  self- 
sacrifice,  and  best  induce  her  dear  ones  to  be  66  crucified  to 
the  world.” 

But  let  no  one  fancy  that,  in  placing  before  her  this  holy 
model-home  of  the  ever-blessed  Mother  of  God,  it  is  the 
intention  of  the  writer  to  urge  any  one  who  chances  to  read 
these  pages  to  expect  to  equal  in  self-sacrifice  either  herself 
or  her  Divine  Son.  ISTo  :  the  aim  of  the  instruction  here 
given  is  to  encourage  all  who  look  into  this  mirror  to  adorn 
their  homes  with  some  of  the  heavenly  flowers  which 
bloomed  in  Nazareth,  to  bring  to  the  performance  of  their 
daily  duties  in  their  own  appointed  sphere,  that  lofty  spirit 
of  unselfish  devotion  to  God  which  will  make  every  thing 
they  do  most  precious  in  his  sight,  transform  the  poorest, 
narrowest,  most  cheerless  home  into  a  bright  temple  filled 
with  the  light  of  God’ s  presence,  blessed  and  protected  by 
God5  s  visiting  angels,  and  fragrant  with  the  odor  of  paradise. 
It  is  merely  sought  to  open  to  the  darkened  eyes  visions 
of  a  world  which  will  enable  the  burdened  soul  to  bear  pa¬ 
tiently  and  joyously  the  load  of  present  ills ;  to  fire  the 
spirit  of  the  careworn  and  the  despairing  with  an  energy 
which  will  enable  them  to  take  up  the  inevitable  cross  and 
follow  Mary  and  her  Son  up  to  heights  where  rest  is  certain 
and  the  promised  glory  unfading. 

No — you  shall  not  be  asked  to  quit  your  home,  or  ex¬ 
change  your  occupations,  or  add  one  single  particle  to  the 
burden  of  your  toil,  your  care,  or  your  suffering  ;  but  she 
who  is  the  dear  Mother  of  us  all  will  teach  you  by  the  silent 
voice  of  her  example,  how  to  bring  the  light  of  heaven 
down  into  your  home,  the  generosity  of  the  children  of  God 
into  the  discharge  of  your  every  occupation,  and  the  sweet 
spirit  of  Christ  to  ennoble  your  toil,  to  brighten  your  care 
and  your  suffering. 

Travelers  among  the  loftiest  mountains  often  chance  upon 
calm,  bright  lakes  within  whose  crystal  depths  are  mirrored 
not  only  the  blue  heavens  into  which  the  eagle  alone  can 


LIFE  OF  FAITH  IN  THE  HOME. 


13 


soar,  and  the  cold,  ice-covered  summits  which  only  the  feet 
of  the  most  daring  few  have  trodden,  but  the  low  and  fer¬ 
tile  hills  aronnd  the  shore  covered  with  the  green  woods, 
the  healthful  pastures,  and  frequented  by  the  shepherds 
and  their  flocks.  It  is  to  these  lovely,  safe,  and  accessible 
heights  of  virtue  that  this  little  book  would  guide  the  foot¬ 
steps  of  mother  and  maiden  alike. 

And  of  such  easy  access  is  the  height  of  purity  of  inten¬ 
tion  and  living  faith  which  should  be  the  constant  light  of 
your  home.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  depth  and  constancy 
of  womanly  affection  that  the  thought  of  the  loved  one, 
during  the  longest  and  most  painful  absence,  wnll  suffice  to 
sustain  them  and  to  brighten  a  life  which  otherwise  would 
appear  cheerless.  Thus  it  is  said  of  that  truest  of  wives, 

ST.  ELIZABETH  OF  HUNGAKY, 

that  during  her  young  husband’ s  long  spells  of  absence  at 
court  or  in  the  wars,  she  was  wont  to  animate  herself  and 
her  large  household  by  the  thought  of  how  much  he  would 
be  pleased,  on  his  return,  that  they  had  endeavored  to  do 
every  thing  as  they  knew  he  would  wish  them.  Elizabeth, 
before  her  marriage,  had  received  from  him,  in  a  moment  of 
bitter  trial  to  her,  a  small  pocket-mirror  which  gentlemen 
in  those  days  usually  carried  with  them.  It  was  of  polished 
silver,  with  the  reverse  adorned  with  a  crucifix  set  in  gems. 
She  never  parted  with  this  dear  pledge  of  his  truth,  often 
taking  it  out  of  her  satchel  to  kiss  it.  During  her  cruel  wid¬ 
owhood  and  when  driven  ruthlessly  forth  from  her  palace 
with  her  helpless  orphans,  she  would  continually  hold  this 
mirror  in  her  hand,  kissing  the  image  of  her  crucified  Lord 
and  recommending  unceasingly  to  his  mercy  the  soul  of 
her  husband.  Nor  was  this  perpetual  remembrance  of  him 
a  source  of  prayerful  resignation  only  ;  it  also  stirred  her 
up  to  vindicate  the  rights  of  his  plundered  children.  As  she 
pleaded  their  cause  before  the  Thuringian  nobles,  she  would 
hold  the  well-known  mirror  in  her  hand,  kiss  it  frequently, 
and  press  it  to  her  heart,  as  if  to  warm  herself  to  greater 


14  x  THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 

energy  and  eloquence.  Nor  were  her  nobles  insensible  to 
the  spectacle  of  their  young  mistress’s  fidelity  and  truth 
to  her  earthly  love. 

In  like  manner,  if  the  thought  of  God  and  the  remem* 
brance  of  his  incomparable  love  have  any  influence  on  our 
lives,  they  will  be  the  soul  of  all  our  actions,  inspiring,  di¬ 
recting,  cheering,  and  sustaining  us  in  all  that  we  plan  and 
undertake  and  suffer  day  after  day. 

St.  Clement  next  praises  in  the  Corinthians  a  “  piety  full 
of  sweetness  and  modesty.”  Piety  is  a  word  of  Latin  ori¬ 
gin,  and,  among  the  old  Homans  who  first  used  it,  meant  that 
spirit  of  dutiful  and  generous  love  with  which  children  do 
the  will  and  seek  the  interests  of  their  parents.  This  sense 
of  free,  generous,  disinterested,  and  unselfish  devotion  to  the 
happiness,  honor,  and  interests  of  one’s  parents,  is  always 
contrasted  with  the  selfish,  mercenary,  or  compulsory  service 

of  a  slave  or  a  servant  in  a  familv.  True-hearted  children 

«/ 

make  their  happiness  to  consist  in  seeking  how  they  can 
best  please  and  honor  father  and  mother  :  what  they  do  is 
not  dictated  by  the  fear  of  punishment  or  the  hope  of  re¬ 
ward  or  the  prospect  of  gain  or  self -gratification.  The  hope 
or  certainty  of  delighting  or  pleasing  or  helping  the  dear 
authors  of  their  being,  such  is  the  thought  which  prompts 
the  labors  or  obedience  of  a  loving  child. 

Not  so  the  mercenary  :  his  motive  is  to  gain  his  wages. 
He  bargains  to  do  so  much  in  return  for  such  a  wage.  The 
happiness  of  the  family,  the  interest  or  honor  of  his  em¬ 
ployers,  their  satisfaction  or  the  praise  which  they  may 
bestow,  do  not,  most  likely,  enter  into  the  thoughts  or  cal¬ 
culations  of  venal  souls. 

You  have  known,  perhaps,  in  many  families,  daughters  so 
noble-minded,  that  they  were  content  to  labor  untiringly 
for  their  parents,  placing  their  whole  delight  in  doing  all 
they  could  to  lighten  the  burden  of  father  and  mother,  or 
to  make  the  home  bright  and  pleasant  for  brothers  and  sis¬ 
ters,  without  seeking  or  expecting  one  word  of  praise  and  ac¬ 
knowledgment.  This  is  the  best  description  of  filial  piety. 

Only  transfer  to  God’ s  service  that  same  unselfish  and  gen- 


THE  TRUE  PIETY  OF  THE  HOME. 


15 


erous  disposition, — asking  yourself  only  liow  muck  you  can 
do  to  please  him,  to  glorify  him,  to  make  yourself  worthy  of 
him,  to  make  him  known  and  have  him  loved  and  served  by 
others, — and  you  have  an  idea  of  what  piety  toward  God  is. 

Thus  faith  gives  to  the  soul  that  “  purity  of  intention,” 
which  not  only  makes  the  thought  of  God  habitual,  but  en¬ 
ables  one  to  lift  one’s  eye  toward  the  Divine  Majesty  in 
every  thing  that  one  does, — in  labor  as  well  as  in  repose,— 
in  suffering  as  well  as  in  enjoyment,  at  home  and  abroad,  in 
company  and  conversation,  as  well  as  in  solitude  and  si¬ 
lence.  It  kindles  in  the  heart  that  flame  of  love  which 
makes  one  burn  with  the  absorbing  desire  of  pleasing  Him 
supremely.  It  is  thus  the  foundation  of  piety,  the  motive 
power  of  every  good  work, — just  as  fire  is  the  generating 
force  of  steam,  and  steam  itself  is  the  mighty  force  which 
annihilates  distance  on  sea  and  land  and  transforms  all  the 
industries  of  the  modern  world. 

The  soul  accustomed  to  keep  God  before  her  eyes  in  all 
her  ways,  cannot  help  being  pious  in  the  truest  sense :  no¬ 
thing  can  prevent  her  from  seeking  in  all  that  she  does  the 
Divine  pleasure,  and  of  esteeming  all  that  she  can  do  and 
suffer  too  little  for  so  great  a  majesty  and  such  incompara¬ 
ble  goodness. 

This  piety — working  ever  beneath  that  all-seeing  Eye- 
must  be  both  sweet  and  modest :  sweet,  in  the  calmness  and 
gentleness  with  which  every  thing  is  undertaken  and  accom¬ 
plished  ;  modest,  in  that  no  seeking  of  self  and  no  conscious¬ 
ness  of  evil  can  disturb  or  overcast  the  limpid  purity  of  a 
soul  which  reflects  only  the  light  and  serenity  of  Heaven, 
and  is  divinely  sheltered  from  every  blast  of  earthly  passion. 

When  we  remember  who  these  early  Christians  were 
whose  sweet  and  virginal  piety  was  praised  by  St.  Clement, 
we  are  filled  with  astonishment  at  the  total  and  sudden 
transformation  which  the  truth  of  the  gospel — the  knowl¬ 
edge  and  imitation  of  Christ  and  his  Virgin  Mother- 
effected  in  the  most  ill-famed  city  of  the  pagan  world  and 
the  most  abandoned  population  known  to  history.  The 
very  name  of  Corinth  was  odious  to  the  ancient  Homans  of 


16 


THE  MIllROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


tlie  true  republican  era, — and  when  she  fell  beneath  the 
Roman  arms,  she  was  utterly  blotted  ont,  lest  the  simpli¬ 
city  and  austerity  of  the  conquering  race  should  become 
corrupt  by  contact  with  the  voluptuous  city.  A  Roman 
colony  was  afterward  planted  there,  and  Corinth  arose  once 
more  from  her  ruins  on  that  enchanted  shore,  shorn  indeed 
of  her  greatness  and  power,  but  scarcely  less  infamous  than 
her  former  self.  It  was  like  the  alkali  plains  of  our  Western 
territories,  where  nothing  seems  able  to  grow  but  the  sage¬ 
brush  which  saddens  the  eye.  No  sooner  had  St.  Paul 
preached  there,  practicing  all  that  he  preached,  than  piety, 
purity,  and  modesty — all  the  gentle  virtues  of  Mary’s  home 
at  Nazareth — spread  with  the  faith  from  house  to  house  in 
Corinth,  till  the  infant  church  there  resembled  a  society  of 
angelic  men  and  women. 

In  soil  deemed  hitherto  incapable  of  producing  a  single 
fruit  of  heavenly  modesty,  the  cross  of  Christ  had  been 
planted ;  the  curse  of  centuries  was  removed,  and  the  land 
began  to  be  fair  with  flowers  of  supernatural  promise. 
What  was  the  part  of  woman  in  this  extraordinary  renova¬ 
tion  %  Three  women  are  mentioned  in  the  New  Testament 
as  having  been  associated -with  the  apostles  in  the  work  of 
planting  and  fostering  the  Christian  faith  in  the  beautiful 
city  and  its  dependencies, — Prisca  or  Priscilla,  Chloe,  and 
Phebe,  revered  as  saints  from  the  apostolic  times  by  the 
churches  of  the  East  and  W est  alike. '  It  was  in  the  house  of 
Prisca  that  St.  Paul  took  up  his  abode  when  he  first  arrived 
at  Corinth.  Her  husband,  Aquila,  was,  like  Paul  himself, 
a  tent-maker  ;  for  it  was  the  admirable  custom,  even  of  the 
highest  and  most  wealthy  Jewish  families,  to  teach  every 
one  of  their  sons  some  trade  or  handicraft,  which  might 
place  them  above  want,  and  thereby  secure  their  independ¬ 
ence,  when  persecution  or  adverse  fortune  deprived  them 
of  country  and  riches.  Aquila  had  been  expelled  from 
Rome  by  the  Emperor  Claudius  just  before  Paul’s  arrival 
on  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth,  and  was  working  at  his  craft  of 
tent-maker,  weaving  for  that  purpose  the  hair  of  the  Phry¬ 
gian  goat  into  a  much  esteemed  and  water-proof  cloth. 


PIETY  OF  EARLY  CHRISTIAN  HOMES. 


17 


Their  common  craft  was  a  first  bond  of  intimacy  between 
the  great  apostle  and  this  household ;  the  Christian  faith 
drew  them  still  closer  together.  At  any  rate,  though  Pris¬ 
cilla  and  her  husband  opened  their  home  and  their  hearts 
to.  the  apostle  and  the  divine  message  which  he  bore,  we 
know  from  Paul  himself  that  he  would  be  beholden  to  no 
one  for  his  support  and .  that  of  his  fellow-laborers  in  the 
gospel.  Still  that  laborious  and  well-ordered  household 
became  the  cradle  of  Christianity  in  Western  Greece,  the 
first  sanctuary  in  Corinth  where  the  Divine  Mysteries  were 
celebrated,  and  the  word  of  God  explained  to  the  highest 
and  lowest  among  the  proud,  cultivated,  and  pleasure-loving 
population.  JSTot  unlike  Priscilla  was  Chloe,  in  all  proba¬ 
bility  also  a  married  woman,  while  Phebe,  the  female  apos¬ 
tle  of  Cenclirem,  the  eastern  suburb  and  seaport  of  Corinth, 
was  unmarried,  a  deaconess,  and  the  first  fruits,  on  that 
long-polluted  land,  of  the  Virgin-Life  destined  to  be  so  fruit¬ 
ful  of  holiness  in  Christian  Europe. 

Priscilla  and  her  husband  followed  Paul  to  Ephesus  in 
Asia,  a  city  scarcely  less  ill-famed  than  Corinth,  where  the 
devoted  and  energetic  wife  shared  the  mortal  dangers  which 
beset  the  apostle,  and  instructed  in  the  Christian  faith  the 
accomplished  and  eloquent  Apollos,  who  was  sent  to  Cor¬ 
inth  to  continue  there  the  good  work  so  gloriously  begun. 
When  Paul  was  sent  in  chains  to  Pome,  the  noble  woman 
and  her  worthy  husband  forsook  every  thing,  risked  even 
life  itself  to  be  near  him,  and  to  share  his  labors  and  perils. 
Priscilla’s  house  in  Pome  became  a  church,  a  center  of 
Christian  activity  and  charity,  and  Chloe  and  Phebe’ s 
names  are  associated  with  hers  in  the  heartfelt  commenda¬ 
tions  of  the  imprisoned  apostle,  and  the  undying  gratitude 
and  veneration  of  every  succeeding  age. 

Most  blessed,  therefore,  of  God  and  man  was  the  sweet 
and  gentle  piety  as  well  as  the  unbounded  hospitality  of 
these  early  Christian  homes.  But  pass  we  not  lightly  over 
this  great  home-virtue  of  hospitality :  this,  and  the  two 
other  precious  virtues  mentioned  by  St.  Clement,  we  must 
reserve  to  the  next  chapter. 

2 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  HOME  VIRTUES  (CONTINUED) — HOSPITALITY,  HOLINESS, 
AND  INNOCENCE  OF  CONVERSATION. 

Let  each  one  inquire  in  the  Church  for  the  poor  and  the  stranger  ;  and 
when  he  meets  them,  let  him  invite  them  to  his  house  ;  for  with  the  poor  man 
Christ  will  enter  it.  He  who  entertains  a  stranger,  entertains  Christ.  The 
glory  of  a  Christian  is  to  receive  strangers  and  pilgrims,  and  to  have  at  his  table 
the  poor,  the  widow  and  the  orphan. — St.  Ephrem,  De  Amove  Pauper  um. 

HOSPITALITY. 

The  Christian  religion,  beside  inheriting  all  the  divine 
legislation  of  preceding  ages,  and  consecrating  all  that  was 
ennobling  and  purifying  in  public  and  private  life,  perfected 
every  virtue  practiced  by  Jew  and  Gentile  by  assigning  to 
each  a  supernatural  motive  and  by  assisting  the  weakness 
of  nature  with  most  powerful  graces. 

Doubtless  in  the  most  ancient  times,  men,  wherever  they 
chanced  to  live,  were  not  altogether  unmindful  of  their 
being  sprung  from  the  same  parents,  and  the  first  impulse  of 
nature  urged  them  to  open  their  house  to  the  stranger  as  to 
a  brother,  one  who  was  their  own  flesh  and  blood.  In  the 
patriarchal  ages  we  find  a  higher  motive  superadded  to  that 
of  common  brotherhood :  that  to  receive  the  stranger,  was 
to  discharge  a  debt  due  to  God  himself— that  to  shut  him 
out  was,  possibly,  to  close  one’s  door  against  the  Deity  in 
disguise.  Abraham  and  his  nephew  Lot  gave  hospitality 
to  angels  disguised  in  human  form,  and  were  rewarded,  the 
former  by  the  birth  of  Isaac,  the  latter  by  being  saved  with 

18 


HOSPITALITY. 


19 


his  family  from  the  terrible  destruction  in  which  Sodom 
and  the  neighboring  cities  were  involved. 

Not  dissimilar  was  the  reward  divinely  granted  to  the 
poor  pagan  widow  of  Sarephta  who  harbored  and  fed  the 
famished  and  fugitive  prophet  Elias,  and  to  the  wealthy  lady 
of  Sunam  who  sheltered  Elisseus.  Their  generous  hospi¬ 
tality  w^as  rewarded  by  the  restoring  to  life  of  the  only  son 
of  each. 

But  in  the  gospel,  Martha  and  Mary  made  them  home  the 
resting-place  of  the  Incarnate  God,  and  their  hospitality 
was  accompanied  by  a  public  and  unhesitating  confession 
of  their  Guest’s  divinity, — and  that,  too,  at  a  time  when  he 
was  most  opposed  and  persecuted  by  the  leading  men  of 
the  nation.  Not  only  were  they,  also,  rewarded  by  the  res¬ 
toration  to  life  of  their  dead  brother,  but  they  had  the  further 
recompense  of  becoming  the  apostles  of  the  Divine  Master. 

This  was,  moreover,  the  return  made  by  Him  to  his 
Mother’s  cousin,  Mary  Salome,  mother  of  St.  James  the 
Elder  and  St.  John  the  Apostle,  for  the  hospitality  so  gen¬ 
erously  bestowed  on  Mary,  after  the  breaking  up  of  her 
own  home  at  Nazareth.  The  same  maybe  said  of  that  other 
Mary,  the  sister  of  the  apostle  St.  Barnabas,  and  the  mo¬ 
ther  of  another  apostle,  John-Mark.  It  is  the  common 
tradition  that  her  house  was  that  in  which  our  Lord  cele¬ 
brated  the  Last  Supper,  in  which  the  Blessed  Virgin  found 
a  refuge  during  the  interval  between  the  Crucifixion  and  the 
Resurrection,  and  in  which  the  apostles  and  disciples  were 
wont  to  assemble  till  the  Holy  Ghost  came  down  on  them. 

Certain  it  is  that  there  the  faithful  were  wont  to  meet 
with  Peter  and  the  other  apostles  till  after  the  martyrdom 
of  St.  Stephen  and  St.  James,  the -imprisonment  and  miracu¬ 
lous  liberation  of  St.  Peter,  and  the  visit  made  to  him  by 
St.  Paul  after  the  latter’s  conversion.  Her  home  was  the 
common  home  of  the  infant  church  of  Jerusalem,  and,  as 
tradition  affirms,  the  first  Christian  church  in  that  city. 
This  generous  mother’s  hospitality  was  rewarded  by  seeing 
both  her  brother  and  her  son  called  to  the  glorious  labors 
and  perils  of  the  apostlesliip. 


20 


TEE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Thenceforward,  the  bestowing  hospitality  was  for  the  mis¬ 
tress  of  a  Christian  household  to  receive  Christ  himself,  the 
God  of  Charity,  in  the  person  of  every  guest  who  crossed 
her  threshold,  be  he  rich  or  poor,  kinsman  or  stranger, 
friend  or  foe,  sick  or  loathsome,  the  holiest  6f  men  or  the 
most  abandoned  of  sinners. 

But  we  must  reserve  for  another  place  the  rules  of  hos¬ 
pitality  to  be  observed  by  the  mistress  of  the  home  and  all 
her  dependents.  We  are  at  present  only  pointing  out  the 
distinctive  character  and  the  ideal  of  Christian  hospitality. 

HOLINESS. 

A  ho]y  house  is  one  in  which  God  is  truly  King  ;  in  which 
he  reigns  supreme  over  the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  in¬ 
mates  ;  in  which  every  word  and  act  honors  his  name.  One 
feels  on  entering  such  a  house,  nay,  even  on  approaching  it, 
that  the  very  atmosphere  within  and  without  is  laden  with 
holy  and  heavenly  influences.  Modern  authors  have  writ¬ 
ten  elegantly  and  eloquently  about  the  home  life  which  was 
the  source  of  all  domestic  virtues  and  all  public  greatness 
in  the  powerful  nations  of  antiquity.  They  describe,  in 
every  household,  in  the  poor  man’ s  cabin  as  well  as  in  the 
palace,  that  altar  set  apart  for  family  worship,  on  which 
the  sacred  tire  was  scrupulously  watched  and  kept  alive 
night  and  day.  No  one  ever  went  forth  from  the  house 
without  first  kneeling  at  that  altar  and  paying  reverence 
to  the  divinity  of  the  place,  and  no  one,  on  returning, 
ever  saluted  his  dearest  ones  before  doing  homage  there. 
There,  too,  at  night  the  household  met  for  prayer  and 
adoration,  and  there  again  with  the  dawn  they  knelt  to¬ 
gether  to  beg  on  the  labors  of  the  day  before  them  the 
blessing  of  the  deity  worshiped  by  their  fathers. 

This  altar  and  this  undying  fire  were  regarded  as  a  some¬ 
thing  so  holy  that  only  the  most  precious  wood  and  the 
purest  material  was  employed  to  feed  the  flame.  Nothing 
filthy  or  defiled  was  permitted  to  approach  the  spot ;  and 
every  indecent  word  uttered  or  act  committed  near  it  was 


WIT  AT  THE  HOME  OUGHT  NOT  TO  BE. 


21 


deemed  a  sacrilege.  This  hearth-altar,  or  hearth-fire,  as  it 
was  called,  was  symbolical  of  the  fate  of  the  family.  If  it 
was  neglected  and  allowed  to  die  out,  this  was  deemed  an 
irreparable  calamity  foreboding  the  ruin  of  the  home  and 
the  extinction  of  the  race. 

In  the  Christian  home  it  is  the  flame  of  piety,  ardent  love 
for  God,  and  charity  toward  the  neighbor,  which  constitutes 
the  hearth-fire  that  should  ever  burn  bright.  Old  Catholic 
homes — how  many  of  our  readers  will  remember  it  ? — were 
wont  to  have  the  cross  placed  outside  as  a  symbol  of  the 
love  for  the  Crucified  which  ruled  all  hearts  within  ;  and  in 
the  interior  his  name,  as  well  as  his  image  could  be  seen 
on  almost  every  wall,  informing  the  stranger-guest  that  he 
was  in  the  house  of  the  common  Parent,  and  in  the  midst  of 
dear  brethren. 

And  how  many  of  ns  may  also  remember  the  poor  but 
cleanly  cottage  of  the  laborer,  or  the  narrow  room  of  city 
families,  on  whose  bare  but  white  walls  there  was  no  orna¬ 
ment  but  the  crucifix,  and  no  glory  but  that  of  the  Holy 
Name  written  there  as  a  seal  of  predestination  ? 

Where  the  fire  of  divine  love  is  fed  as  carefully,  and  the 
mother  and  her  daughters  watch  as  jealously  as  the  Roman 
matrons  and  maidens  of  old  that  its  flame  shall  never  be 
extinguished,  there  is  little  fear  that  any  conversation  but 
what  is  “  innocent 5  ’  shall  prevail.  Purity  and  charity  are 
the  twin-lights  of  every  home  deserving  of  God’s  best  bless¬ 
ing  and  man’ s  heartfelt  veneration. 

WHAT  THE  HOME  OUGHT  NOT  TO  BE. 

The  Spaniards  say,  “Shut  the  door  and  the  Devil  passes 
by  ;  ”  the  true  woman  who  has  read  the  preceding  pages 
and  understood  the  teaching  conveyed  therein,  will  know 
how  to  preserve  her  home-sanctuary  from  evil.  It  is,  com¬ 
paratively,  an  easy  task  to  cultivate  and  cherish  in  one’s 
own  life  and  in  the  souls  of  those  nearest  and  dearest  to 
one,  all  the  sweet  virtues  and  holy  habits  indicated  above, 
or  connected  with  true  piety.  But  how  hard  it  is,  when 


22 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


once  evil  habits  have  been  formed,  to  resist  or  reform  them ! 
There  are  certain  horrible  skin  diseases  to  which  persons  of 
the  pnrest  blood  and  most  refined  nature  are  most  liable. 
And  the  terrible  poison,  sometimes  caught  by  a  breath  or 
a  touch  of  the  hand,  once  deposited  in  blood  hitherto  un¬ 
tainted,  will  spread  instantaneously,  and  commit  the  most 
fearful  ravages. 

So  is  it  with  souls  highly  privileged :  a  single  voluntary 
act  of  sin  may  be  followed  by  such  a  state  of  spiritual  lep¬ 
rosy,  that  all  their  former  beauty  and  glory  appear  changed 
into  hideous  deformity  and  seemingly  incurable  corruption. 

Be  careful  to  keep  evil  far  away  from  the  hearts  of  your 
dear  ones  ;  and  close  and  bar  the  door  of  your  home  at  all 
times,  when  you  know  that  wickedness  is  abroad  in  the 
street  or  on  the  highway.  Keep  out  the  fatal  influences 
which  might  weaken  or  destroy  the  precious  boon  of  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  in  your  household  ;  bar  and  bolt  your  door  against 
uncharitableness,  immodesty,  and  that  odious  spirit  of 
irreverance  toward  age,  authority,  and  all  that  our  fathers 
have  taught  us  to  respect  and  love. 

And,  O  women  who  read  this,  learn  here  how  to  make 
your  home,  though  never  so  poor  and  bare,  lovely  to  your 
dear  ones  and  an  object  of  respect  and  envy  to  all  who  know 
you.  This  you  shall  be  taught  in  the  next  chapter. 


\ 


V 


CHAPTER  I V. 

HOW  SAINT  MARGARET,  QUEEN  OF  SCOTLAND,  MADE  HER 
HOME  LOVELY  AND  HER  KINGDOM  A  PARADISE — HOW 
EVERY  TRUE  WOMAN  CAN  IMITATE  MARGARET,  AND 
MAKE  HER  LITTLE  HOME-KINGDOM  SWEET  AND  AT¬ 
TRACTIVE. 

Malcolm  (IV.),  King  of  Scotland  .  .  .  shone  like  a  star  in  the  heavens  ; 

for,  being  prevented  [supplied  beforehand]  by  God  in  the  benediction  of  sweet¬ 
ness  from  his  tender  years,  he  had  a  fervent  love  for  God,  and  was  of  such  pure 
conscience  and  gentleness  of  manners,  that  when  amongst  persons  of  the  world 
he  seemed  like  a  monk,  and,  indeed,  an  earthly  angel. — William  of  Newbury, 
Rerum  Anglicarum,  lib.  i.  25. 

This  Malcolm  was  tlie  grandson  of  St.  David,  and  tlie 
great-grandson  of  St.  Margaret,  the  blessed  scion  of  a  line 
of  heroic  kings.  Let  ns  see  how  the  gentle  Margaret  trans¬ 
formed,  by  the  irresistible  ascendency  of  her  womanly  vir¬ 
tues,  her  rude,  worldly-minded,  and  warlike  husband  into  a 
saint,  and  all  Scotland  into  a  school  of  gentleness  and  piety. 
Her  example  will  teach  most  eloquently  how  every  true¬ 
hearted  woman  can  make  all  hearts  yield  to  the  influence 
of  her  goodness,  and  her  own  life  be  like  a  reservoir  of  liv¬ 
ing  waters  in  a  thirsty  land  for  many  a  generation  after  her 
day. 

Margaret,  born  in  exile,  reared  in  Buda  in  Hungary  be¬ 
neath  the  eyes  of  its  apostolic  king,  St.  Stephen  (997-1038), 
returned  to  England  in  her  early  girlhood  only  to  become  an 
orphan,  and  to  have  to  fly  for  dear  life  with  her  sister  and 
brother  across  the  seas.  A  storm  providentially  cast  them 
on  the  shore  of  Scotland,  where  they  found  a  refuge  in  the 

23 


24 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


court  of  Malcolm  III.,  or  Malcolm  Canmore  (Greathead). 
Malcolm  had  himself  tasted  the  bitterness  of  exile,  hay¬ 
ing  seven  years  before  been  obliged  to  fly  to  England  after 
the  murder  of  his  father  by  Macbeth.  St.  Edward  the 
Confessor,  Margaret’s  grand-uncle,  had  warmly  befriended 
the  fugitive  and  enabled  him  to  recover  his  own.  So  the 
generous  Malcolm  was  but  too  happy  to  repay  to  the  help¬ 
less  descendants  of  Alfred  the  Great  the  debt  of  gratitude 
thus  contracted. 

Margaret  was  then  in  her  twenty -fourth  year,  and  had 
been  during  their  long  orphanhood  a  second  mother  to  her 
sister,  Christina,  and  her  brother,  the  chivalrous  Edgar 
Atheling.  Her  wonderful  beauty  and  her  angelic  modesty, 
much  more  than  her  royal  birth  and  the  accomplishments 
due  to  the  careful  education  she  had  received,  drew  on  her 
the  admiration  of  the  untutored  Scottish  nobles  and  their 
warlike  king.  He  was  attracted  by  the  manifold  graces  of 
the  royal  maiden  ;  for  hers  were  the  supernatural  virtues 
which  he  had  learned  to  worship  in  Edward  the  Confessor, 
and  which  shone  with  a  softened  and  gentler  charm  in  the 
lovely  exile.  She  became,  a  few  months  after  her  arrival  in 
the  court  of  Dunfermline,  its  mistress  and  the  queen  of  all 
Scotland,  to  the  unbounded  delight  of  every  class  in  the 
community. 

It  was  a  rude  age,  in  a  country  which  a  long  series  of  inva¬ 
sions  by  the  Northmen,  frequent  wars  with  England,  and 
perpetual  feuds  between  the  native  clans,  had  kept  half-un¬ 
civilized  in  spite  of  its  Christianity.  Providence  had  re¬ 
served  for  a  woman,  for  this  young  queen,  whose  soul  had 
been  so  chastened  and  tempered  by  a  whole  life  of  trial,  to 
complete  the  work  begun  by  St.  Columba  and  his  brethren 
five  centuries  before  that. 

Let  a  woman’s  hand  trace  the  first  outlines  of  the  glorious 
picture  of  piety,  charity,  and  patriotism  offered  in  this 
queenly  life  of  twenty-three  years  on  the  throne. 

4 ‘Margaret  was  a  true  daughter  of  Alfred,  and  the  tradi¬ 
tions  of  the  Alfred  of  Hungary  (St.  Stephen)  were  fresh 
upon  her,  and,  instead  of  sitting  down  to  cower  alarmed 


SAINT  MARGARET  OF  SCOTLAND. 


25 


amid  the  turmoils  round  her,  she  set  herself  to  conquer  the 
evils  in  her  own  feminine  way,  by  the  performance  of  her 
queenly  duties.  She  was  happy  in  her  husband  :  Malcolm 
revered  her  saintly  purity  even  more  than  he  loved  her 
sweet,  sunny,  cheerful  manner,  or  admired  her  surpassing 
loveliness  of  person. 

“He  looked  on  her  as  something  too  precious  and  tender 
for  his  wild,  rugged  court,  and  attended  to  her  slightest 
bidding  with  reverence,  kissing  her  holy  books,  which  he 
could  not  read,  and  interpreting  her  Saxon-spoken  advice 
to  his  rude  Celts. 

4  4  She  even  made  him  help  her  to  wash  the  feet  of  the 
poor,  and  aid  her  in  disgusting  offices  to  the  diseased,  and 
his  royal  treasury  was  open  to  her  to  take  all  that  she  de¬ 
sired  for  alms.  Sometimes  she  would  pretend  to  take  it  by 
stealth,  and  Malcolm  would  catch  her  by  her  wrists  and 
carry  her  to  her  confessor  to  ask  if  she  was  not  a  little  thief 
who  deserved  to  be  well  punished.  In  his  turn  he  would 
steal  away  her  books,  and  bring  them  back  after  a  time  gilt 
and  adorned  with  beautiful  illuminations.”  * 

W e  have  not,  in  order  to  form  an  estimate  of  the  incredi¬ 
ble  amount  of  good  done  by  this  extraordinary  woman,  to 
depend  upon  legends  or  disjointed  historical  fragments. 
Her  confessor  himself,  a  monk  of  Durham  called  Theodoric 
or  Thierry,  composed  a  history  of  this  most  admirable  and 
most  imitable  life. 

The  Scottish  chieftains  who  were  least  inclined  to  reform 
their  lives  or  refine  their  manners  in  emulation  of  Malcolm 
Canmore,  could  not  resist  the  influence  which  drew  them  to 
Dunfermline,  were  it  only  to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  looking 
upon  a  beauty  which  appeared  to  them  unearthly,  of  being 
addressed  by  their  royal  mistress  with  a  grace  that  bor¬ 
rowed  more  of  its  charm  from  piety  than  from  courtesy, 
and  of  bearing  with  them  to  their  homes  some  trifling  pres¬ 
ent,  which  borrowed  infinite  value  in  their  eyes  from  the 
angelic  goodness  of  the  giver. 


*  Charlotte  Mary  Yonge,  “  Cameos  from  English  History,”  vol.  i.,  p.  98. 


26 


TEE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANEOOD. 


She  effected  in  the  thoughts,  the  sentiments,  the  manners, 
and  the  morals  of  these  hitherto  nntamed  and  nnruly  no¬ 
bles,  not  a  little  of  the  same  change  which  had  taken  place 
in  the  mind  and  heart  and  conduct  of  the  king ;  and  thus 
the  blessed  influence  of  her  virtue  and  gentleness  spread 
from  above  downward,  through  every  class,  till  the  lowliest 
peasants  and  the  remotest  Highland  glens  were  made  to  feel 
the  refining  and  elevating  effects  of  Margaret’s  rule  and 
motherly  solicitude. 

The  court  of  Malcolm — from  the  boisterous  meeting-place 
of  turbulent  and  intemperate  warriors  that  it  had  been  for 
centuries — became  the  image  of  the  court  of  Buda,  where 
St.  Stephen  made  Grecian  culture  and  Magyar  magnificence 
to  reign  side  by  side,  blended  and  sanctified  by  the  cross. 
“Not  one  of  them  (her  nobles)  ventured  to  use  a  profane 
word  or  make  an  unseemly  jest  before  her.  They  had  a 
rude,  ungodly  practice  of  starting  away  from  table  without 
waiting  for  grace,  and  this  the  gentle  queen  reformed  by 
sending,  as  an  especial  gift  from  herself,  a  cup  of  wine  to 
all  who  remained.  In  after  times,  the  last  cup  was  called, 
after  her,  St.  Margaret’ s  cup,  or  the  grace-cup. 

“To  improve  the  manners  of  the  ladies,  she  gathered 
round  her  a  number  of  young  girls,  whom  she  brought  up 
under  her  own  eye,  and  she  used  to  sit  in  the  midst  of  them, 
embroidering  rich  vestments  for  the,  service  of  the  Church, 
and  permitting  cheerful  talk  with  the  nobles  whom  she 
admitted,  all  men  of  whose  character  she  had  a  good  opi¬ 
nion.”  * 

From  these  young  ladies  she  exacted  that  their  homes 
should,  in  turn,  become  so  many  centers  of  zeal  for  the  good 
of  others ;  and  thus  every  home  in  Scotland  was  benefited 
by  the  examples  and  teachings  of  the  queen.  But  above 
all  her  other  qualities  shone  her  tender  love  for  the  poor 
and  the  sick.  She  founded  hospitals  and  asylums  for  them  ; 
and  among  her  nobles,-  her  most  especial  friends  and  favor¬ 
ites  were  such  as  distinguished  themselves  by  their  active 
charities. 


*  Miss  Yonge,  ibidem. 


®°STOf\!  COLLEGE  UEsFtAn^ 

chestnut  hiul,  mass. 


HOW  MARGARET  CIVILIZED  SCOTLAND.  27 

Fully  aware  that  true  religion  is  the  parent  and  nurse  of 
that  great  chief  virtue,  she  bent  herself,  from  the  first  year 
of  her  reign,  to  the  task  of  making  it  flourish  wherever  the 
misfortunes  of  the  times  had  caused  it  to  languish,  and  to 
plant  it  by  serious  missionary  labors  wherever  the  mission¬ 
aries  had  not  penetrated  or  had  only  had  an  imperfect 
success. 

She  caused  councils  to  be  convened,  encouraged  the  bish¬ 
ops  and  abbots  to  enact  the  most  salutary  decrees,  support¬ 
ing  them  with  the  whole  force  of  the  royal  authority  ;  ob¬ 
tained  the  erection  of  new  episcopal  sees,  did  away  with 
every  abuse  condemned  by  the  Supreme  Pontiff,  insisted  on 
cordial  and  unqualified  submission  to  his  teaching  ;  repaired 
churches  and  monasteries  in  decay,  and  built  new  ones  in 
every  place  where  they  were  most  needed  or  promised  to  be 
most  useful,  and,  above  all,  spared  no  effort  and  no  expense 
to  give  to  Scotland  a  thoroughly  educated,  exemplary,  and 
devoted  clergy. 

While  thus  proving  herself  to  be  a  true  mother  to  her 
adopted  people,  she  was  not  unmindful  of  her  English 
origin  or  of  the  sufferings  and  needs  of  her  countrymen. 
The  wars  between  the  two  kingdoms  which  she  was  power¬ 
less  to  prevent,  left  many  English  captives  in  Scottish  pris¬ 
ons.  But  her  generosity  and  her  influence  found  means  to 
alleviate  their  condition  and  to  hasten  their  ransom.  She 
founded  an  hospital  for  sick  and  infirm  prisoners,  where 
they  were  tenderly  cared  for  till  they  obtained  their  free¬ 
dom  ;  and  for  this  purpose,  she  spared  not  her  own  purse, 
nor  warm  appeals  to  the  generosity  of  the  Scottish  captors 
and  the  affection  of  the  prisoners’  English  relatives. 

Thus  the  veneration  and  love  felt  for  Margaret  in  Scot¬ 
land  spread  beyond  its  borders  to  every  part  of  England ; 
and  from  the  nearest  counties  emigrants  flocked  across  the 
boundary  to  settle  in  the  Lowlands,  and  enjoy  there  the 
security  and  other  manifold  blessings  bestowed  on  their 
subjects  by  Malcolm  Canmore  and  his  angelic  queen. 

There  are  other  inestimable  benefits  for  Avhich  Scotland 
has  always  acknowledged  herself  indebted  to  St.  Margaret : 


28 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


the  foundation  of  her  great  schools  of  learning,  the  estab¬ 
lishment  of  a  large  and  flourishing  commerce  with  conti¬ 
nental  Europe,  the  encouragement  of  the  liberal  and  the 
industrial  arts,  and  the  enactment  of  wise  and  enlightened 
laws  protecting  the  liberties  and  fostering  the  best  interests 
of  the  people. 

Of  the  nine  children  with  whom  her  union  was  blessed, 
one,  Ethelred,  died  in  infancy,  the  eldest,  Edward,  was 
slain  with  his  father  before  Alnwick  Castle  in  1093  ;  of  the 
others,  three  sons,  Edmund,  Edgar,  and  David,  reigned  suc¬ 
cessively  on  the  throne  of  Scotland,  continuing  the  Golden 
Age  inaugurated  by  their  parents :  of  her  two  daughters, 
Matilda  or  Maud  became  the  wife  of  Henry  I.  of  England, 
and  was  her  mother’ s  living  image,  and  Edith  was  married 
to  Eustace,  Count  of  Boulogne,  becoming  in  her  turn  the 
mother  of  her  people. 

Surely  it  was  a  beautiful  life,  this  of  the  tempest-tossed 
royal  child,  born  in  exile  far  away  from  the  land  of  her 
fathers,  and  then  cast  by  the  storm  on  the  Scottish  coast, 
like  a  treasure  beyond  all  price  to  be  cherished  by  king 
and  people,  and  to  live  in  the  hearts  of  all  succeeding  gen¬ 
erations. 

With  the  mirror  of  this  most  admirable  life  before  us,  let 
us  see  how  every  woman  can  in  like  manner  make  of  her 
home  a  paradise,  and  be  the  loved  and  worshiped  queen  of 
the  little  kingdom  which  no  one  can  take  from  her. 

HOW  THE  POOR  MAN’S  HOME  CAN  BE  MADE  RICH  AND  BRIGHT 
AND  DELIGHTFUL  BY  A  TRUE  WOMAN’S  INDUSTRY. 

Lest  persons  who  are  not  of  princely  station  or  noble 
birth  should  fancy  that  the  lessons  of  St.  Margaret’s  life  do 
not  concern  them,  we  shall  devote  this  section  to  showing 
how  easy  and  necessary  it  is  for  the  mistress  of  a  poor  and 
lowly  home  to  imitate  the  sainted  Scottish  queen :  women 
of  wealth  and  rank  will  find  practical  instruction  for  them¬ 
selves  in  the  succeeding  sections. 

As  it  was  to  a  poor  and  lowly  home  that  the  Son  of  God 


THE  POOREST  HOMES  MADE  DELIGHTFUL. 


29 


came,  when  lie  began  the  work  of  onr  redemption,  as  it 
was  in  the  home  of  a  poor  mother  that  he  lived  so  content¬ 
edly  during  thirty  years,  so,  ever  since,  his  followers  have 
looked  upon  the  dwellings  of  the  poor  with  inexpressible 
love  and  tenderness.  Ah  !  h,e  is  no  true  lover  of  Christ 
who  is  not  drawn  to  the  home  of  poverty  and  labor ;  and 
the  spirit  of  Christ  dwells  not  in  the  heart  whose  sympa¬ 
thies  do  not  go  forth  to  the  trials  and  distresses  of  those 
who  are,  above  all  others,  the  friends  of  Jesus  Christ. 

But  onr  concern  is  now  with  the  wife,  the  daughter,  the 
sister  of  the  laboring  man  and  the  poor  man  ;  we  wish  them 
to  understand  what  royalty  of  spirit  can  and  ought  to  be 
theirs,  in  order  to  be  the  true  imitators  and  true  children  of 
that  great  Mother,  who  knew  how  to  make  the  poor  home 
of  Joseph  so  rich,  so  bright,  so  blissful,  so  lovely  in  the 
eyes  of  men  and  angels. 

She,  too,  was  of  right  royal  blood  who  was  the  mistress 
of  that  little  home  where  Joseph  toiled  and  the  Divine 
Child  grew  up  in  all  grace  and  sweetness,  like  the  lily  of 
the  valley  on  its  humble  stem  beneath  the  shadow  of  the 
sheltering  oak. 

It  was  the  lessons  of  Mary’s  life  at  Nazareth  that  Mar¬ 
garet  had  learned  from  her  royal  kinsfolk  at  the  court  of 
Buda,  and  had  practiced  so  industriously  through  girl¬ 
hood  and  early  womanhood,  till  she  became  mistress  of 
a  court  and  a  kingdom.  One  lesson  above  all  others  she 
was  trained  to  practice  from  childhood — to  be  forgetful  of 
self  and  mindful  only  of  making  every  one  around  her 
happy. 

Woman’s  entire  existence,  in  order  to  be  a  source  of 
happiness  to  others  as  well  as  to  herself,  must  be  one  of 
self-sacrifice.  The  first  step  in  this  royal  pathway  to  all 
goodness  and  greatness,  is  to  forget  self.  Self  with  its 
miserable  little  cares  and  affections  is  the  root  of  all  the 
wretchedness  we  cause  to  others,  and  all  the  misery  we 
endure  ourselves.  Every  effort  we  make  to  forget  self,  to 
leave  self  behind  us,  and  to  devote  ourselves  to  the  labor  of 
making  every  person  with  whom  we  are  bound  to  live, 


30 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


happy,  is  rewarded  by  interior  satisfaction  and  joy.  The 
supreme  effort  of  goodness  is, — not  alone  to  do  good  to 
others  ;  that  is  its  first  and  lower  effect, — but  to  make 
others  good.  So  with  unselfishness  :  the  first  step  is  to  for¬ 
get  one’s  own  comfort  in  order  to  seek  that  of  others  ;  the 
next  is  to  forget  one’s  own  pains  and  suffering,  in  order  to 
alleviate  those  of  others,  or  even  to  discharge  toward  others 
the  duties  of  sisterly  or  neighborly  kindness. 

We  have  known  such  great-souled  women  among  the  log- 
cabins  of  the  forest  settlements  of  Canada,  in  the  crowded 
tenement  houses  and  most  ill-favored  quarters  of  London 
and  Liverpool  and  Yew  York,  as  well  as  in  the  hardworked 
manufacturing  population  of  the  Yew-England  towns  and 
the  poor  slaves  of  Maryland :  women  animated,  enlightened, 
and  moved  in  all  their  actions  by  the  Spirit  of  God, — the 
Spirit  who  filled  Mary  at  Yazareth,  Elizabeth  in  her  moun¬ 
tain  home,  and  Margaret  of  Scotland  amid  the  manifold 
cares  and  duties  of  a  kingdom. 

What  our  country, — indeed,  what  every  Christian  coun¬ 
try  under  the  sun, — needs  most,  are  these  great-souled  wives, 
mothers,  and  sisters  in  the  dwellings  of  our  over-burdened 
labprers  ;  women  for  whom  the  roof  above  them  and  the 
four  walls  which  inclose  their  dear  ones  are  the  only 
world  they  care  to  know,  the  little  paradise  which  they  set 
their  hearts  on  making  pleasant,  sunny,  and  fragrant  for 
the  husband  who  is  out  in  the  hot  sun  or  the  bitter  cold, 
beneath  the  pelting  of  the  rain  or  the  snow  or  the  sleet, — 
who,  poorly  clad  and  shod,  with  his  scanty  fare  of  hard 
bread  and  cold  tea,  is  working  away  for  the  little  home 
and  the  wife  and  babes, — and  who  is  singing  in  his  heart  as 
he  bethinks  him  of  the  warm  welcome  that  awaits  him 
when  the  long  day  is  over, — of  the  bright  smile  and  the  loving 
words  that  will  be  sure  to  greet  him  when  he  crosses  the 
threshold  of  his  own  little  Eden, — of  the  cheerful  fire  in 
winter  and  the  humble  meal  made  so  delicious  by  the  love 
that  prepares  it  and  the  sweet  words  that  season  it,— of  the 
rest  and  the  security  and  the  peace  which  force  the  over¬ 
flowing  heart  of  the  husband  and  father  and  brother  to  think 


MAKE  TOUR  HOME  BRIGHT  AND  SUNNY. 


31 


and  to  say  that  there  is  no  spot  of  earth  so  dear  and  so 
blessed  as  the  little  sanctuary  built  up  and  adorned  and 
made  full  of  song  by  a  true  woman’ s  heart. 

O  woman,  woman !  if  you  only  knew  how  much  you 
have  it  in  your  power  to  do, — with  His  assistance  who  can 
never  fail  us  when  we  do  our  best, — to  make  true  men  of  the 
husband  of  your  choice,  of  the  sons  whom  God  has  given 
you  as  his  most  precious  treasures ;  true  women,  in  their 
turn,  of  the  little  girls  who  are  growing  up  at  your  knee, — 
to  be,  when  you  are  gone  to  your  reward,  mothers  blessed 
and  praised  by  all  who  know  them  ! 

We  have  just  spoken  of  the  Divine  assistance  which  never 
fails  the  soul  striving  earnestly  to  fultill  important  duties 
and  to  do  all  the  good  she  can.  Think  of  the  contract  God 
entered  into  with  you,  when  you  entered  into  the  married 
state  and  received  at  the  hands  of  the  Church  the  nuptial 
blessing.  You  were  told  that  the  matrimonial  union  had 
its  model  in  the  union  of  Christ  with  his  Church,  that  his 
great  love  for  her,  which  brought  him  to  the  Cross  and 
binds  him  to  be  present  on  our  altars  to  the  end  of  time, — 
is  the  type  of  the  great  and  self-devoting  love  which  hus¬ 
band  and  wife  should  ever  have  for  each  other.  Did  you 
ever  reflect,  that  when  you  put  your  hand  in  your  hus¬ 
band’  s  hand  before  the  Church,  giving  him  your  heart  and 
your  life  thenceforward, — that  God,  who  is  ever  by  the  side 
of  those  who  believe  and  trust  in  him,  promised  you  a 
mighty  wealth  of  grace  to  be  all  your  own  till  death,  en¬ 
abling  you  to  love  your  husband  more  and  more  daily,  with 
a  deeper  and  a  holier  love,  to  make  your  own  life  like  that 
of  the  Church  toward  her  Crucified  Love,  one  perpetual  act 
of  devotion  and  self-sacrifice,  giving  him  in  his  every  need 
your  own  strong  love  to  sustain  and  comfort  and  strengthen 
him,  taking  up  his  cr$ss  courageously,  and  cheering  him  to 
labor  and  to  suffer,  because  you  both  know,  or  ought  to 
know,  that  God  is  ever  with  you  f 

Were  your  lot  cast  and  your  home  built  in  a  treeless 
plain  amid  a  dry  and  barren  country,  how  you  would  thank 
the  man  who  would  dig  for  you  at  your  very  door  a  well  so 


32 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


deep  and  so  unfailing  that  its  cool  and  sweet  waters  would 
ever  flow  forth,  winter  and  summer,  for  yourself  and  your 
dear  ones !  And  yet  the  great  graces  attached  by  Christ 
to  the  worthy  reception  of  the  divine  sacrament  of  matri¬ 
mony,  form  within  your  home,  wherever  you  chance  to  be, 
a  well  of  water  for  the  soul’ s  health  and  strength  so  divine¬ 
ly  prepared,  that  no  length  of  time  can  exhaust  it.  Why 
do  you  not  drink  of  the  waters  of  your  own  well  ? 

We  have  just  said  how  much  the  true  woman  has  it  in 
her  power  to  do, — no  matter  how  poor  her  home  or  hard  her 
husband’s  lot, — if  she  only  knew  both  the  extent  of  her 
power  to  cheer  his  lot  and  the  sacredness  of  the  obligation 
which  binds  her  to  do  it. 

We  now  appeal  to  the  experience  and  generosity  of  the 
wife,  mother,  and  sister  of  the  laboring  man.  There  was  a 
rapid  sketch  above  of  the  comforts  and  delights  of  the  poor 
hard-working  man’s  home,  when  love  and  devotion  were 
toiling  to  prepare  a  sweet  rest  for  him  when  the  day’ s  work 
was  ended. 

DARK  AKD  CHEERLESS  HOMES. 

But  have  we  seriously  thought  of  the  number  of  homes 
made  dark  and  cheerless  and  desolate  and  hateful  to  the 
husband,  the  brother,  the  son,  and  the  daughter  too,  by  the 
absence  of  that  bright  spirit  of  love,  which  works  at  home 
from  dawn  till  sunset,  to  have  every  thing  warm  and  plea¬ 
sant  and  restful  for  the  weary  ones  coming  back  after  their 
eight  and  ten  hours  of  labor  \ 

If  the  devoted,  God-fearing,  sweet-tempered  woman  is  re¬ 
warded  by  seeing  her  dear  ones  unhappy  when  kept  away 
from  the  bright  home  she  makes  for  them,  and  most  happy 
when  seated  near  the  warm  hearth  ^nd  charmed  with  her 
smile  and  her  voice,  it  is  no  less  certain  that  the  selfish, 
untidy,  ill-tempered,  and  bitter-tongued  woman  succeeds 
in  making  home  unbearable  for  every  one  who  is  dependent 
on  her. 

Why  is  it  that  so  many  men,— thrifty,  hard-working,  made 


DARK  AND  CHEERLESS  HOMES. 


33 


to  be  and  disposed  to  be  devoted  husbands  and  most  exem¬ 
plary  fathers, — are  driven,  at  the  end  of  their  day  of  toil, 
to  find — not  rest,  indeed,  nor  recreation — in  the  neighbor’ s 
house, — but  some  distraction  from  the  thought  of  their  own 
comfortless  home,  some  rest  from  the  din  and  lash  of  the 
ceaseless  tongue  which  is  their  torment  ?  Why  are  so  many, 
at  length,  driven  to  the  tavern  to  seek  forgetfulness  in  intox¬ 
ication  \  Is  it  not  because  woman  forgets  to  be  loving  and 
devoted  and  ingenious  in  the  sweet  arts  of  making  her  fire 
burn  brighter  on  the  hearth,  and  her  own  person  more  at¬ 
tractive  to  her  dear  ones  by  some  little  ornament  put  on  to 
welcome  the  laborers  at  evening,  and  her  humble  meal  made 
more  appetizing  by  some  of  the  many  cheap  seasonings  that 
the  poorest  can  buy,  and  her  whole  house  shining  with 
cleanliness  and  filled  with  the  sweet  music  of  her  own 
delighted  tones  ?  Ah  !  love  has  stores  from  which  can  be 
borrowed  without  stint  and  at  little  cost  kind  words  and 
warm  smiles  and  a  thousand  other  things  which  go  straight 
to  the  heart  thirsting  for  the  endearments,  the  joys,  and  the 
repose  of  home.  Why  will  you  not  be  a  queen  in  your  own 
little  kingdom,  O  wife,  O  mother,  O  sister,  and  make  all 
hearts  subject  to  you  by  this  ascendency  of  your  goodness 
and  devotion  ? 

There  are  worse  consequences  still, — especially  in  cities 
and  manufacturing  towns, — which  are  caused  by  the  want 
of  the  wifely  and  motherly  qualities  described  above. 

Young  people  of  both  sexes  who  are  forced, — perhaps  from 
early  boyhood  and  girlhood, — to  seek  for  employment  out¬ 
side  of  their  home,  feel  an  imperative  need  of  the  rest  and 
comfort  and  love  of  their  own  fireside,  when  the  end  of  their 
long  day  of  toil  has  come.  Blessed  is  the  mother  who 
knows  how  to  make  their  home  bright  and  warm  for  them  ! 
But  what  shall  we  say  of  her  who  cares  not  to  do  so  ?  or  who 
makes  her  home  intolerable  to  her  dear  ones  ? 

This  much  is  certain,  that  in  our  over-crowded  cities,  if 
not  elsewhere,  thousands  upon  thousands  of  hard-working 
young  people  are  driven  into  dangerous  company  and  cor¬ 
rupting  amusements  because  they  have  no  home  to  love,  to 
3 


34 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


% 

be  proud  of,  in  which  to  find  the  repose  of  heart  and  body 
so  needful  for  their  age  especially.  There  is  in  this  a  mine 
of  suggestion  for  parents,  for  pastors,  as  well  as  for  all  per¬ 
sons  to  whom  Providence  has  given  the  means  and  the  will 
to  prevent  the  ruin  of  our  youth. 

But  far  better  than  all  explanations  or  dissertations  may 
be  the  bright  examples  quoted  in  the  next  chapter.  Before 
we  come  to  these,  however,  let  us  complete  the  present  sub¬ 
ject-matter  by  showing 

HOW  THE  SELFISHNESS  AND  FOLLY  OF  A  FASHIONABLE 
WOMAN  CAN  MAKE  THE  MOST  MAGNIFICENT  HOME 
INTOLERABLE. 

We  wish  the  reader  to  understand  the  term  “  fashionable 
woman”  in  the  odious  or  objectionable  sense  in  which  it 
is  taken  by  the  sound  judgment  of  people  of  the  world. 
With  “ fashions”  in  so  far  as  they  are  unobjectionable  and 
mark  the  changes  in  dress  to  which  even  the  best  and  least 
worldly  persons  in  society — men  as  well  as  women— have 
to  conform,  we  do  not  mean  to  find  fault ;  this  would  be 
foreign  to  our  present  purpose  and  serve  only  to  distract 
the  reader  unprofitably.  It  will  be  seen  by  a  glance  at 
what  we  have  to  say,  that  our  censure  addresses  itself  to  an 
exceptional  class  of  wealthy  women,  whose  number,  unhap¬ 
pily,  is  increasing  daily. 

The  home  of  the  wealthiest,  we  take  it,  no  matter  how 
splendid  outwardly  or  how  magnificent  and  luxurious  with¬ 
in,  can  be  at  best  but  splendid  misery,  where  unselfish  and 
devoted  love  does  not  preside  over  the  household,  provide 
for  the  comfort  of  every  person  there,  and  minister  to  their 
happiness  by  the  bright  cheerfulness  without  which  the 
most  gorgeous  furniture  has  no  luster,  and  the  electric 
warmth  of  affection,  without  which  courtly  manners  are  but 
a  lifeless  show. 

Here  is  a  man  who  has  fought  a  hard  battle  with  fortune, 
but  has  won  it  at  last.  Like  true  soldiers  on  every  field, 
he  has  not  cared  during  his  long  struggle  for  many  comforts, 
— luxury  was  beyond  his  reach.  But  now  that  fortune  lav- 


SPLENDID  MISERY. 


35 


ishes  her  favors  on  him,  he  wishes  to  enjoy  life  in  a  home 
that  shall  be,  he  hopes,  a  paradise.  W ould  that  many  of 
our  most  thrifty  and  fortunate  men,  though  never  so  up¬ 
right  and  honorable,  would  remember  the  old  pagan  super¬ 
stition  about  exposing  one’s  bliss  to  the  eyes  of  the  gods 
or  flaunting  one’ s  prosperity  in  the  sunlight!  The  “loud¬ 
est”  wealth  is  never  likely  to  yield  nnmixed  or  lasting 
felicity ;  this  is  better  secured  by  quiet  tastes,  and  the  re¬ 
pose  enjoyed  in  the  shade  and  with  the  select  few. 

But  our  fortunate  man  has  built  and  furnished  a  home  so 
comfortable  that  only  a  companion  who  can  be  devoted  to 
him  is  wanting  to  complete  it.  He  has  been  attracted  by  a 
handsome  face  and  a  name  without  reproach.  Perhaps,  on 
his  part,  there  has  been  none  of  that  romantic  feeling  to 
which  the  superficial  world  gives  the  name  of  love ;  but 
there  is  in  his  choice  the  hearty  purpose  of  finding  one  who 
will  love  him  truly,  and  to  whose  happiness  he  wishes  to 
devote  his  fortune  and  himself. 

She  is  a  woman,  young,  indeed,  and  stainless,  but  selfish 
and  vain  ;  fond  of  dress,  of  admiration,  of  display,  and  who 
is  anxious  to  wed  a  fortune  large  enough  to  permit  her  to 
gratify  all  her  frivolous  tastes.  Her  husband  had  the  ambi¬ 
tion  to  succeed  in  business, — that  ambition  is  now  gratified  ; 
but  he  had  other  and  nobler  aims  which  he  had  to  forego 
in  the  hard  striving  after  wealth,  and  which  now  possess 
his  soul.  He  would  fain  cultivate  his  mind,  he  would  in¬ 
dulge  his  taste  for  such  of  the  fine  arts  as  make  home  beau¬ 
tiful  and  home  enjoyments  more  delightful.  In  the  wife’s 
family  were  several  persons  noted  for  their  culture  and 
scientific  attainments ;  indeed,  an  accidental  acquaintance 
with  one  of  these  had  led  to  a  first  introduction  to  the  wo¬ 
man  whom  he  had  made  his  bride,  and  in  whom  he  hoped 
to  find  a  perfect  sympathy  for  the  intellectual  aspirations 
which  served  to  brighten  the  future  before  him. 

But  the  literary  tastes  and  scientific  pursuits  of  her  rela¬ 
tives  had  been  this  woman’ s  aversion  from  girlhood ;  and 
her  husband  was  not  slow  in  discovering  that  there  was 
not  one  particle  of  intellectuality  in  her  composition.  Her 


36 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


honeymoon,  instead  of  being  spent  in  traveling,  was  taken 
np  with  an  unbroken  round  of  receptions  and  parties.  Her 
powers  of  endurance,  when  the  ball-room  or  the  theater 
were  concerned,  seemed  to  be  unlimited  ;  but,  once  in  her 
privacy,  she  seemed  never  to  think  that  her  husband  wished 
to  enjoy  her  companionship,  or  that  she  was  expected  to 
converse  with  him,  to  play  or  sing  for  him,  or  to  make  a 
single  effort  at  being  his  companion  for  a  single  hour.  The 
afternoons  were  spent  in  the  park,  when  her  equipage  had 
to  outshine  the  richest,  and  her  toilet  was  made  to  eclipse 
the  most  fashionable.  The  evenings,  for  the  most  part,  were 
consumed  in  interminable  sittings  with  her  French  maid, 
who  decked  her  mistress  out  with  incomparable  art  for  the 
ball  or  the  theater.  The  bridegroom  had  hoped  that  this 
thirst  for  display  and  dissipation  would  be  quenched  by  the 
unlimited  indulgence  of  the  first  year  of  married  life,  and 
that  after  this  necessary  infliction  he  should  have  the  quiet 
of  his  home  and  the  sweet  company  of  his  young  wife. 
Besides,  his  health  could  not  stand  the  serious  disturbance 
caused  in  his  regular  habits  by  late  hours  and  this  unnatural 
changing  of  day  into  night  and  night  into  day. 

The  second  and  third  years  of  his  matrimonial  life  found 
him  disappointed,  dispirited,  and  utterly  miserable,  with  the 
certainty,  moreover,  of  having  bound  himself  for  life  to  a 
woman  who  never  could  be  a  companion  to  him,  who  had 
neither  head  nor  heart,  nothing,  in  fine,  to  recommend  her 
but  a  pretty  face,  like  a  painted  mask  covering  an  empty 
skull. 

His  beautiful  home  became  intolerable  to  him  ;  and  there 
is  no  knowing  what  desperate  or  downward  course  the 
heart-broken  man  might  have  pursued,  if  he  had  not  been 
asked  by  one  of  his  wife’ s  relatives  to  accompany  him  on  a 
scientific  expedition  to  our  Western  territories.  This  offer 
kindled  once  more  his  purest  ambition  ;  and,  after  limiting 
to  a  very  generous  amount  the  monthly  expenditure  of 
his  young  wife,  he  was  glad  to  escape  from  his  home  and 
to  seek  knowledge  and  fame  in  the  field  of  science. 

She,  meanwhile,  had  but  one  purpose  in  life,  to  dress. 


THE  ABSORBING  PASSION  FOR  DRESS. 


37 


At  the  death  of  a  distinguished  fellow-citizen  she  literally 
spent  three  whole  days  and  nights  visiting  the  most  fashion¬ 
able  warehouses  and  closeted  with  the  most  reputed  mil¬ 
liners,  to  find  out  what  style  of  hat  and  what  dress  she 
might  wear  at  the  funeral,  so  as  to  throw  the  whole  of 
“ Vanity  Pair”  into  the  shade. 

When  the  springtide  of  that  heartless  beauty  had  passed 
away,  it  was  already  autumn  for  her.  The  complexion 
which  was  her  only  charm  had  been  early  ruined  by  the 
reckless  and  needless  use  of  cosmetics,  much  more  even 
than  by  her  feverish  life  of  enjoyment.  No  splendor  of 
dress  could  conceal  the  fatal  decay,  and  no  depth  of  paint 
could  mask  it.  And  with  the  consciousness  of  this  prema¬ 
ture  decline,  her  fretfulness  and  peevishness  made  her  inter¬ 
course  intolerable,  unrelieved  as  its  dullness  was  by  a  single 
mental  accomplishment,  or  a  solitary  conversational  grace. 

There  are  showy  trees  in  our  American  forests  whose 
brilliant  flowers  attract  the  eye  in  spring ;  but  the  flowers 
themselves  are  of  an  offensive  odor,  and  they  bear  no 
wholesome  fruit,  while  the  wood  itself  is  unfit  for  any  use¬ 
ful  purpose. 

The  husband,  on  his  return  from  the  West,  sought  relief 
from  the  dreariness  of  his  home-life  in  the  speculations 
of  the  stock-exchange,  heeding  little,  if  at  all,  the  remon¬ 
strances  of  a  wife  he  heartily  despised.  When  last  heard 
of,  his  name  was  mentioned  as  one  of  many  ruined  by  some 
sudden  fall  in  railroad  stocks.  His  house  and  furniture 
passed  out  of  his  possession,  and  he  was  left  alone  with 
poverty,  obscurity,  and  a  wife  without  head  or  heart  or 
even  beauty. 


CHAPTER  Y. 


I  liave  seen  on  earth  angelic  and  heavenly  manners,  admirable  beauties  in 
this  world,  insomuch  that  the  remembrance  charms  and  afflicts  me  ;  for  all 
that  I  now  behold  seem  but  dreams,  shadows,  and  smoke.  Love,  wisdom,  merit, 
sensibility,  and  grief,  formed,  in  weeping,  a  sweeter  concert  than  any  other 
ever  heard  on  earth,  and  the  hearers  were  so  attentive  to  this  harmony,  that 
not  a  leaf  trembled  on  the  branches,  such  was  the  sweetness  which  pervaded 
all  the  air  around. — Petrarch. 

It  is  strange  and  amazing  that  those  very  women  who  are  so  delicate  that 
the  mere  humming  of  a  bee  is  sufficient  to  chase  them  from  the  most  delight¬ 
ful  garden  of  the  world,  should  have  the  courage  to  introduce  discord  into 
their  houses. — Le  Moir,  La  Devotion  Aisee . 

HOW  HUSBAND  AND  WIFE  TOGETHER  MAKE  A  HAPPY  HOME. 

In  one  of  the  exquisite  books  written  by  a  contemporary 
author,*  many  examples  and  extracts  are  given,  all  tending 
to  show  how  blissful  is  the  condition  of  every  family  in 
which  the  principles  of  the  Catholic  religion  are  sedulously 
practiced  by  parents  and  children.  In  the  house  of  Count 
St.  Elzear — the  son  of  a  saint  and  the  husband  of  another, 
the  tutor  of  a  king,  the  governor  and  savior  of  his  kingdom  ; 
the  gentle  knight,  the  great-souled  statesman,  and  skillful 
general,  who  died  at  twenty-eight,  the  idol  and  model  of 
two  nations — we  have  the  perfect  mirror  of  domestic  gov¬ 
ernment.  It  is  not  easy  to  say,  whether  his  wife,  St.  Del- 
phine,  and  her  saintly  husband,  are  more  to  be  admired  for 
the  supernatural  virtues  which  shone  in  their  lives,  or  for 
the  practical  common-sense  which  dictated  the  rules  they 

*  We  mean  Kenelm  Digby.  We  here  borrow  from  his  Compitum,  or  the 
.  “  Meeting  of  the  Ways  at  the  Catholic  Church,”  book  i.,  chapter  iv. 

38 


WHAT  A  PATIENT  WIFE  GAN  DO. 


89 


established  over  their  household  and  over  their  princely 
domains. 

But,  though  Elzear  had  been  reared  as  a  saint  from  in¬ 
fancy,  and  had  scarcely  emerged  from  boyhood  when  they 
were  affianced  and  married, — Delphine,  who  was  by  two 
years  his  elder  (though  only  fifteen),  became  thenceforward 
the  guiding  and  controlling  spirit.  Although  intrusted,  at 
so  unripe  an  age,  with  the  government  of  large  estates  in 
France  and  the  kingdom  of  Naples,  and  finding  himself  at 
the  head  of  so  numerous  a  household,  it  was  affirmed  bv  the 
unanimous  testimony  of  his  servants,  retainers,  and  subjects 
that  not  a  sign  of  ill-temper  or  impatience  ever  betrayed  a 
disposition  naturally  passionate  and  fierce. 

His  wife,  who  studied  him .  so  closely,  wondered  at  this 
extraordinary  mastery  over  self,  and  said  to  him  one  day  : 
“What  kind  of  a  man  are  you,  never  to  show  anger  or 
emotion  when  treated  with  insolence  or  seriously  wronged  ? 
.  .  .  Are  you  incapable  of  feeling  resentment  ?  Wliat  harm 
could  it  do  to  the  wicked  men  who  occasionally  do  you  foul 
wrong,  if  you  manifested  a  little  indignation  at  their  con¬ 
duct  ?”  “Why  should  I  betray  temper  or  give  way  to 
indignation,  my  dear  Delphine?”  was  the  reply.  “Anger 
never  serves  any  good  purpose.  Nevertheless,  I  shall  let 
you  into  a  little  secret  of  mine.  Know,  then,  that  often 
enough,  when  wronged  in  word  or  deed,  I  do  feel  my  anger 
swell  up  within  me.  But  I  never  fail  to  recall  how  our  dear 
Lord  was  treated  in  his  passion  ;  and  say  to  myself,  4  Even 
if  thy  servants  did  buffet  thee  and  pluck  thy  beard,  how 
much  more  outrageously  was  he  treated  ! 5  ”  He  died  in 
1323. 

THE  WRATHFUL  HUSBAND  TRANSFORMED  BY  PATIENCE. 

In  1355,  lived  at  Sienna,  in  Italy,  a  nobleman,  Giovanni 
(John)  Colombino,  who  was  quite  the  opposite  of  St.  Elzear. 
He  was  extremely  irritable,  and  took  no  pains  to  master  his 
temper.  Coming  home  one  day  at  his  dinner  hour,  and 
finding  that  the  meal  was  not  ready,  he  flew  into  a  furious 


40 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


passion,  and  began  to  upset  and  break  the  furniture  in 
the  dining-room.  His  wife — a  holy  woman — endeavored  to 
pacify  him,  and,  while  urging  the  servants  to  hurry  forward 
their  preparations,  she  argued  sweetly  with  her  husband  on 
the  unseemliness  of  such  displays  of  anger,  and  begged  him 
to  read  a  book,  while  she  would  go  to  aid  the  cook.  He 
fiung  the  book  away  from  him,  and  stalked  back  and  forth 
in  his  rage,  while  the  lady  hastened  to  the  kitchen. 

Presently,  however,  he  began  to  cool  down  and  to  feel 
heartily  ashamed  of  his  weakness.  So,  picking  up  the 
book,  he  began  to  read  it.  It  was  the  Lives  of  the  Saints, 
— and  in  the  mirror  of  their  conduct  he  beheld  the  horrible 
deformity  of  his  own  life.  From  that  hour  there  was  a 
total  change  in  Giovanni  Colombino  he  became  the  won¬ 
der  of  Sienna,  died  in  odor  of  sanctity,  and  added  one  more 
name  to  the  long  roll  of  Christian  heroes,  who  owed,  under 
Providence,  their  greatness  and  heroism  to  the  irresistible 
influence  of  a  saintly  woman. 

WHAT  AN  ANGELIC  DAUGHTER  AND  SISTER  DID. 

In  the  year  186-,  a  family,  composed  of  father  and  mo¬ 
ther,  with  three  children,  came  from  afar  to  live  in  a  quiet 
suburb  of  one  of  our  great  Eastern  cities.  The  father,  Mr. 

S - ,  had  been  the  heir  to  a  considerable  fortune,  which 

he  had  first  impaired  by  mismanagement,  and  then  com¬ 
pletely  lost  by  involving  it  all  in  unwise  ventures.  He  had 
been  induced  to  come  to  the  East  by  the  offer  of  employment 
as  bookkeeper  or  accountant  in  a  large  shipping  firm.  He 
took  possession  of  his  modest  little  suburban  house  under 
peculiarly  distressing  circumstances.  His  wife,  a  woman  of 
uncommon  beauty  and  goodness,  was  in  the  last  stage  of 
consumption,  and  the  fatal  termination  of  the  malady  wras 
hastened  by  the  fatigues  of  a  long  journey,  the  bitter  cold 
of  an  unusually  severe  autumn,  and  the  material  discom¬ 
forts  of  her  new  home.  The  cottage  which  the  family  had 
rented  was  old,  damp,  had  been  for  some  years  untenanted, 
and  was  but  scantily  furnished  and  insufficiently  warmed. 


AN  INTEMPERATE  FATHER. 


41 


“I  trust  in  you,  Nora,” — gasped  the  dying  mother,  as 
she  held  the  hand  of  the  kneeling  girl  in  one  of  her  own, 
and  with  the  other  touched  the  bent  golden  head  half  in 
blessing  and  half  caressingly, — “and  I  know  God  will  help 
you.”  The  priest,  who  had  just  brought  to  that  death-bed 
the  Divine  Pledge  of  the  eternal  possession,  was  standing 
near,  deeply  moved  by  all  that  he  had  seen  of  these  inter¬ 
esting  strangers.  The  simple,  enlightened  faith  and  exalted 
piety  of  the  mother,  the  angelic  grace  of  the  eldest  daugh¬ 
ter,  and  the  helpless,  hopeless  expression  of  the  poor  father, 
as  he  supported  the  younger  child, — fragile,  fair-haired,  and 
dazzlingly  beautiful,  but  with  consumption  written  on  her 
wan  cheek  and  wasted  form,— all  that  went  to  his  heart  and 
kept  him  there  till  the  divine  messenger,  Death,  had  per¬ 
formed  his  errand.  An  only  son,  a  lad  of  eighteen,  appren¬ 
ticed  to  a  civil  engineer,  was  absent,  and  could  only  reach 
the  house  of  mourning  as  they  were  about  to  set  out  for  the 
church  and  the  cemetery. 

When  the  priest,  with  moist  eyes,  summoned-  courage  to 
say  to  the  remaining  parent  and  his  offspring,  that  all  was 
over,  and  that  one  more  saintly  soul  had  gone  to  her  rest 
and  reward, — Nora,  startled  by  an  exclamation  from  her 
father,  turned  round  to  see  her  sister  apparently  lifeless  in 
his  arms.  “O  my  darling,  my  darling!”  she  said  as  she 
raised  the  rigid  form  and  covered  its  face  with  her  tears  and 
kisses  ;  “you  must  not  leave  me  now  !  Oh  !  God  will  not 
take  you  from  me  !  .  .  .” 

The  priest,  with  a  few  earnest  words  of  sympathy  in  the 
father’ s  ear,  hastened  away,  when  the  fainting  girl  revived, 
promising  to  return  soon  and  obtain  for  these  afflicted  ones 
all  the  aid  they  needed  in  their  bereavement. 

A  few  weeks  deepened  immeasurably  the  gloom  which 

had  fallen  on  that  now  motherless  household.  Mr.  S - , 

naturally  irritable,  had  become  intolerably  peevish  in  con¬ 
sequence  of  his  many  disappointments.  His  temper  had 
sorely  tried  his  sick  wife ;  and  after  her  death  it  proved  a 
source  of  continual  suffering  to  her  children.  The  boy, 
William,  was  seldom  at  home,  and  so  escaped  these  domes- 


42 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


tic  discomforts  ;  but  poor  Nora  and  her  little  suffering  Fan. 
ny  were  made  to  feel  their  bitterness  daily  and  almost 
hourly. 

For,  to  add  to  the  pinching  poverty  they  were  enduring, 
their  father  lost  his  place  of  accountant.  His  haughty  man¬ 
ner,  which  misfortune  had  not  softened,  his  censorious  and 
prying  disposition,  which  a  certain  scrupulosity  had  only 
made  more  troublesome  and  intolerable  to  others,  gave 
offense  to  every  subordinate  in  the  office.  He  also  took  it 
on  himself  to  lecture  his  employers  on  certain  transactions 
with  the  custom-house  which  excited  his  suspicion.  Just 
as  December  was  beginning  to  tax  to  the  utmost  Nora’s 
resources  in  housekeeping,  her  father  was  dismissed. 

This  was  terrible  news  for  the  poor  child  of  fifteen,  who 
knew  not  where  to  look  for  the  means  of  keeping  a  roof 
above  them  in  a  season  rendered  exceptionally  severe  by 
intense  cold  and  the  great  dearth  of  all  things.  She  was  a 
stranger,  too,  in  the  city  and  their  immediate  neighborhood, 
— and  to  no  human  being,  not  even  to  her  confessor,  had 
she  breathed  a  word  of  the  utter  destitution  which  had 
fallen  on  them. 

With  the  tidings  of  her  father’s  dismissal  a  new  enemy 
to  her  peace  appeared.  She  had, — strange  as  it  may  seem, 
— never  known  by  any  experience  of  hers  what  drunken^ 
ness  was,  had  never  seen  an  intoxicated  person.  What 
was  her  horror  and  dismay  to  behold  her  dear  parent  in 
that  condition !  Hitherto  she  only  had  eyes  for  his  vir¬ 
tues  ;  in  the  light  of  her  perfect  innocence  and  sinlessness 
his  imperfections  had  been  overlooked  or  viewed  only  as 
the  shadows  inseparable  from  the  bright  sides  of  his  char¬ 
acter. 

It  was  a  fearful  revelation  to  the  care-burdened  girl.  But 
her  womanly  instinct  and  true  nobleness  of  nature  impelled 
her,  even  when  this  first  manifestation  of  infirmity  was 
renewed  again  and  again,  only  to  treat  him  whom  she  loved 
and  reverenced  so  singularly,  with  the  tenderness,  the 
respect,  the  delicacy  due  to  a  sick  and  helpless  father. 
She  hid  him  away  from  every  eye,  even  from  those  of  her 


THE  DA  TIGHTER' S  TRIUMPH. 


48 


young  sister,  who  was  encouraged  to  believe  that  the  change 
she  could  not  but  remark  was  due  to  grief  and  exhaustion. 
Nora  spent  hours  of  the  night  in  prayer,  when  all  was  still 
in  her  cottage,  bedewing  with  her  tears  her  mother’s  cruci¬ 
fix,  and  conversing  with  the  Court  of  Heaven  as  if  the  vail 
had  been  withdrawn,  and  she  were  permitted  to  plead  for 
her  dear  ones  at  the  Mercy  Seat,  and  face  to  face  with  the 
Divine  Majesty. 

From  that  Presence  she  always  arose  overflowing  with 
comfort,  with  peace  and  light  and  strength ;  and  the  morn¬ 
ing  ever  found  her  armed  with  increased  courage  for  the 
struggle  before  her.  It  had  been  the  invariable  custom  of 
her  parents  to  perform  together  their  night  and  morning 
devotions.  Nora,  by  a  happy  inspiration,  took  her  mother’s 
place  by  his  side  from  the  beginning  of  his  bereavement, 
and  to  his  unspeakable  satisfaction.  Even  when  half  stupe¬ 
fied  by  drink,  he  would  be  persuaded  to  kneel  with  her 
and  lift  his  soul  to  God :  the  morning  never  failed  to  find 
him  humiliated,  conscience-stricken,  and  self-accusing,  but 
irritable  and  despondent.  She  never  uttered  one  word  of 
reproach  or  so  much  as  hinted,  in  their  conversation,  at  the 
growing  habit  which  filled  her  with  undefinable  terror  and 
foreboding. 

One  night  he  returned  late, — she  knew  not  whence, — and 
unable  as  he  was  to  say  his  night-prayers,  had  lain  down 
half-undressed  on  his  bed, — his  angel-daugliter  watching 
wearily  near  the  half-opened  door  of  his  chamber.  On 
awaking,  he  was  struck  to  the  heart  with  sorrow,  and  when 
his  pale  and  hollow-eyed  child  made  her  appearance,  he 
cast  himself  on  her  neck  in  a  mute  agony  of  tears.  She 
kissed  him,  soothed  him,  lavished  on  him  words  of  love  and 
comfort  such  as  God  puts  on  the  lips  of  the  pure  and  brave- 
hearted.  At  length — “O  Nora,”  he  said,  “this  must  be  no 
more!”  and  kneeling  by  her  side  they  both  prayed  in 
silence.  God  heard  their  united  prayers.  That  trial  was 
thenceforth  spared  to  Nora. 

Another  blessing,  a  few  days  afterward,  rewarded  her 
filial  piety.  She  wrote  to  her  father’s  late  employers,  soli- 


44 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


citing  an  interview,  and  received  a  favorable  answer.  Re¬ 
commending,  as  was  her  wont  in  every  serious  undertaking, 
the  success  of  her  visit  to  the  Father  of  the  orphan  and 
afflicted,  she  presented  herself  at  the  office,  surprised  and 
charmed  the  chief  partner  with  her  beauty,  her  artless  sim¬ 
plicity,  the  rare  culture  in  one  so  young  displayed  during 
the  interview,  and  especially  by  the  eloquence  with  which 

she  pleaded  and  won  her  father’s  case.  Mr.  S -  was 

given  an  occupation  more  suitable  to  his  years  and  antece¬ 
dents,  and  the  daughter  was  delicately  told  of  his  former 
unpopularity  and  its  causes. 

These,  with  all  a  woman’s  tact,  Nora  set  about  correct¬ 
ing  ;  and,  wonderful  to  relate,  in  good  time  she  succeeded 
in  effecting  a  great  change  in  her  father’ s  temper,  his  bear¬ 
ing  toward  his  associates  in  business  hours,  and  his  dispo¬ 
sition  to  fault-finding.  The  humiliation  which  the  old  gen¬ 
tleman  felt  at  his  late  weakness  made  him  as  docile  as  a 
child  to  his  daughter’s  training.  And  so  Nora  was  left 
free  to  devote  herself  to  her  sick  sister,  and  to  a  long  and 
earnest  correspondence  with  her  brother,  whose  duties  com¬ 
pelled  him  to  long  absences,  and  whose  health  as  well  as 
conduct  began  to  cause  her  watchful  heart  no  little  alarm. 

Fanny’s  constitutional  debility  had  suffered  much  from 
the  long  journey  the  family  had  recently  made  to  their  new 
abode,  as  well  as  from  her  mother’s  death,  and  the  loss  of 
many  luxuries  and  comforts  the  child  had  till  then  been 
accustomed  to.  About  Christmas-tide  the  physician  pro¬ 
nounced  her  case  one  of  chronic  spine  disease,  but  the 
sweet  sufferer  was  not  allowed  to  know  of  it.  She  seemed, 
however,  to  brighten,  revive,  and  gain  strength  under  the 
warm  sunlight  of  her  sister’ s  love,  and  the  tender  nursing 

of  that  gentle  and  cunning  hand.  But  just  then  Mr.  S - 

caught  cold,  and  the  illness  soon  assumed  the  form  of  vio¬ 
lent  pleurisy,  leaving  but  little  hopes  of  recovery,  as  the 
New  Year  dawned  on  them. 

When  the  priest  was  summoned  hurriedly  on  the  evening 
of  the  great  feast  of  Christmas,  his  impression  on  entering 
the  cottage  was,— as  he  afterward  declared,— one  of  reve* 


flORA’S  FORTITUDE  SORELY  TRIED. 


45 


rential  awe ;  for  a  something  heavenly  seemed  to  pervade 
the  atmosphere  which  tilled  it.  The  door  was  opened  by 
Fanny,  looking,  in  her  simple  dress  of  black,  and  with  her 
dazzling  complexion,  like  an  angel  just  descended  to  tarry 
a  brief  space  with  the  mourners.  The  whole  house  was 
decorated  with  evergreens  and  artificial  flowers,  but  a  re¬ 
fined  taste  had  presided  at  the  decoration,  and  was  evident 
in  the  few  simple  ornaments  of  the  mantel-piece,  in  the  ex¬ 
quisite  neatness  of  the  sick-chamber,  and  in  the  preparation 
of  the  temporary  altar  for  the  sacrament.  The  patient 
was  in  a  deep  slumber  when  the  priest  entered :  Nora  was 
kneeling  by  his  side,  her  hand  held  in  her  parent’ s  with  so 
tight  a  grasp  that  she  could  not  or  dared  not  withdraw  it 
without  interrupting  the  repose  which  powerful  narcotics 
had  procured  him. 

As  she  turned  her  head  to  greet  the  priest,  he  was  struck 
with  the  rapt  look  of  gratitude  for  his  coming  and  of  adora¬ 
tion  for  the  Gift  of  which  he  was  the  bearer.  The  poor 
slumberer  soon  awoke,  and  his  spirit  was  prepared  for  the 
reception  of  the  divine  and  awful  graces  ordained  for  the 
Christian’s  death-struggle  by  Him  who  is  the  Author  and 
Finisher  of  our  faith.  Nora  moved  about  the  sick-room 
like  some  one  of  the  virgin  train  who  evermore  accompany 
the  Lamb  ;  and  her  sister  knelt  at  the  foot  of  the  bed, 
silently  pouring  forth  her  tears  and  prayers.  When  Holy 
Yiaticum  had  been  administered  and  the  last  benediction 
given,  the  elder  spoke  to  the  priest  with  an  air  of  quiet  but 
preternatural  fortitude.  She  knew  what  was  coming,  and 
trusted  in  the  Comforter  for  strength  to  sustain  her. 

Both  on  quitting  and  entering  the  cottage  the  priest  had 
remarked  that  there  was  only  fire  in  the  sick-room  ;  his 
previous  inquiries  about  the  circumstances  of  the  family 
had  elicited  from  the  neighbors  information  enough  to 
make  him  feel  certain  that  Nora  had  to  contend  with  great 
distress.  From  herself  he  could  obtain  no  answer  to  his 
timid  and  indirect  questions.  But  it  so  happened  that 

Mr.  S - ’s  employer,  hearing  of  his  serious  illness,  called, 

with  his  eldest  son,  on  the  priest,  and  begged  the  latter  to 


46 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


accompany  them  to  the  cottage.  It  was  a  timely  visit — a 
glance  satisfied  the  merchant  of  the  urgent  want  of  relief. 
The  cottage  was  his  property  ;  he  resolved  at  once  on  mak¬ 
ing  it  most  comfortable  ;  and  besides  begged  Nora  to  draw 
at  once  her  father’s  full  year’s  salary,  which  was  trebled 
without  her  knowledge.  The  most  skillful  medical  aid  was 
also  secured,  and  a  lively  interest  was  created  by  the  good 
priest’ s  frequent  praise  of  these  afflicted  strangers. 

William  hastened  to  his  father’s  sick-bed,  traveling  night 
and  day  from  the  upper  Mississippi,  where  he  and  his 
patron  were  superintending  the  building  of  a  bridge. 
Whether  he  had  inherited  his  mother’s  constitutional 
weakness,  or  his  frame  was  not  proof  against  the  fatigue  of 
so  long  a  journey,  and  the  discomforts  and  privations  from 
which  his  very  slender  purse  could  not  purchase  an  exemp¬ 
tion,  he  reached  the  house  of  death  only  to  be  prostrated 
with  fever.  His  father  died  a  few  hours  after  his  son’s 
arrival,  and  the  good  priest  who  had  been  the  former’ s  con¬ 
soler  in  his  last  hours  was  called  in  to  minister  to  the  latter 
before  his  parent  had  been  borne  to  the  cemetery  and  laid 
beside  his  wife. 

Nora,  with  a  woman’s  fortitude,  bore  up  against  this  new 
trial,  and  God,  who  has  stored  up  in  woman’s  heart  such 
treasures  of  love  and  enduring  devotion’  enabled  this  tender 
girl,  exhausted  as  she  was  by  the  grief  and  labors  of  all 
these  weary  months,  to  be  for  her  brother  all  she  had  been 
for  both  her  parents.  There  were  no  Sisters  of  Charity  at 
hand;  but  the  merchant’s  wife,  a  Protestant  lady  of  rare 
goodness,  had  visited  Nora  under  her  new  affliction,  and  in¬ 
sisted  on  remaining  with  her  for  a  few  days.  The  principal 
Catholic  ladies,  also,  touched  by  what  they  heard,  came  to 
sympathize  and  to  admire ;  and-  to  see  the  lovely  orphans 
was  to  become  attached  to  them.  But  Nora  would  devolve 
on  no  one  her  duties  toward  her  sick  brother,  on  whom 
both  she  and  Fanny  now  centered  their  entire  affection. 

Their  brother  was  saved.  And  now,  why  delay  the 
reader  ?  William’s  convalescence  was  a  long  and  painful 
one.  He  had  inherited  his  father’s  peevishness,  and  had 


THE  SISTERS  VICTORY  AND  REWARD. 


47 


apparently  lost  in  his  somewhat  wandering  life  as  a  civil 
engineer  every  trace  of  the  early  piety  inculcated  by  his 
mother.  People  wondered  that  such  an  unamiable  and 
God -abandoned  youth  could  have  come  of  the  same  parent¬ 
age  as  the  two  angelic  beings  whom  he  called  sisters. 

Nora,  while  he  was  slowly  recovering  his  strength,  had 
been  casting  about  for  some  occupation  which  might  enable 
her  to  maintain  the  two  now  entirely  thrown  on  her  care. 
The  merchant’ s  wife  continued  to  be  devoted  to  the  orphans, 
and  had  occasionally  brought  her  son  to  visit  William  dur¬ 
ing  the  latter’ s  convalescence.  When  able  to  bear  exercise 
in  the  open  air,  the  young  men  drove  out  together,  and  so 
an  intimacy  gradually  sprang  up  between  the  two  families. 
It  was  remarked,  not  without  wonder,  that  under  Nora’s 
influence  William  became  gradually  transformed  into  an¬ 
other  man.  But  few  traces  of  his  petulance  and  irrita¬ 
bility  remained.  Indeed,  after  the  first  weeks  of  his  recov¬ 
ery,  the  frequent  oaths  which  startled  the  echoes-  of  that 
pious  abode  were  heard  no  more,  and  the  old  habit  of  night 
and  morning  prayer  was  resumed,  William  from  his  bed  or 
his  arm-chair  heartily  joining  in  his  sisters’  devotions.  A 
new  moral  sense  seemed  to  be  growing  up  in  him,  refining 
not  only  his  language  but  his  very  features,  so  that  before 
spring  had  passed  into  summer  the  neighbors,  who  at  first 
could  see  but  a  slight  resemblance  between  the  sisters  and 
their  coarse  and  burly  brother,  were  struck  with  the  re¬ 
markable  likeness  he  bore  them  in  features  and  expression. 

It  was  not  all :  the  merchant’s  son  had  seen  too  much  of 
Nora  not  to  have  been  charmed  with  her  beauty  of  soul 
much  more  even  than  with  her  graces  of  person.  His  mother 
shared  his  admiration  of  such  extraordinary  w^orth,  nor  was 
his  father  indifferent  to  the  virtues  which  he  had  himself 
more  than  once  warmly  eulogized.  Nora,  after  imploring 
the  divine  guidance  and  consulting  the  priest  who  had  been 
her  counselor  and  benefactor,  listened  favorably  to  the 
young  merchant’s  suit,  and  accepted  gratefully  his  mother 
for  her  own.  When  the  days  of  mourning  were  ended,  just 
as  another  spring  vras  spreading  her  fairest  charms  over 


48 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


\ 

earth  and  sky,  she  became  the  wife  of  this  lover,  having 
her  sweet  Fanny  with  her  as  the  angel  of  her  home.  They 
are  both,  at  this  day,  the  models  of  Christian  mothers  and 
maidens  in  another  land,  whither  the  young  husband’s  ex¬ 
tensive  business  forced  him  to  transfer  his  residence ;  they 
are  the  idols  of  the  young  and  the  worshiped  benefactresses 
of  the  poor  and  suffering,  blessed  in  hundreds  of  homes  to 
which  they  bring  light  and  comfort,  prized  in  their  own 
above  all  earthly  treasures,  and  more  and  more  reverenced 
daily  by  those  who  daily  and  hourly  witness  their  goodness 
and  humility. 

how  woman’s  selfishness  ruins  the  home. 

It  may  be  that  many  of  the  class  we  are  most  anxious  to 
benefit  by  the  suggestions  herein  conveyed,  the  over-bur¬ 
dened  with  toil  and  care  and  poverty,  will  think  and  say 
that  these  lessons  point  not  to  the  improvement  of  such  a 
miserable  lot  as  theirs.  If  they  only  knew  how  many  a 
poor  home  is  a  paradise  of  heroism,  of  spotless  purity,  of 
truth  and  honor  and  contentedness  !  It  is  especially  with 
the  homes  of  the  laborer,  the  mechanic,  the  struggling  pa¬ 
rents  with  a  numerous  family  and  scanty  sustenance,  that 
the  writer  of  these  pages  has  been  all  his  life  familiar.  For 
one  man  of  wealth,  or  high  birth,  or  distinguished  social, 
position  with  whom  he  may  have  been  acquainted,  there 
are  hundreds  of  the  hard  toilers,  of  the  over-burdened  and 
the  hard  driven,  whose  hand  he  has  grasped,  whose  brave 
true  hearts  he  has  read,  and  whose  humble  homes  he  has 
found  adorned  with  virtues  and  merits  a  prince  might  envy 
in  vain. 

It  is  to  this  loved  class  of  readers  that  he  would  bring 
light  and  comfort  by  the  perusal  of  such  examples  as  are 
here  set  forth. 

Eugene  F - was  the  seventh  son  of  a  stone-mason,  who 

had  begun  his  married  life  with  a  sum  of  five  dollars  over 
and  above  all  the  expenses  of  his  wedding.  But  he  had  what 
was  more  to  him  than  five  thousand,  a  soul  which  was  in- 


HOW  WOMAN'S  SELFISHNESS  RUINS  THE  HOME.  49 


capable  of  wronging  God  or  the  neighbor  willfully  and  know¬ 
ingly,  a  pair  of  strong  arms,  a  brave  and  trustful  heart,  a 
firm  determination  to  improve  himself  in  his  craft  and  to 
conquer  independence  for  himself  and  his  wife — and,  more 
than  all  that,  he  had  in  that  young  wife  a  soul  as  spotless 
as  his  own,  and  a  treasure  of  devotion,  sound  sense,  and 
unalterable  sweetness,  which  made  his  life  one  long  bridal 
day  of  unclouded  joy  and  unmixed  bliss.  Thirteen  chil¬ 
dren  blessed  the  home  of  this  laborious  couple,  six  of  whom 
were  girls,  and  all  of  whom,  inheriting  the  untainted  blood 
and  robust  constitution  of  their  parents,  survived  them,  and 
were  worthy  of  them. 

In  the  home  in  which  Eugene  was  born,  there  was  indeed 
independence,  comfort,  abundance  for  all  the  need  of  the 
large  nestful, — but  never  affluence.  Eugene  had  been  early 
apprenticed  to  a  worker  in  brass,  had  mastered  his  craft 
with  singular  ease,  and  at  the  age  of  twenty  had  several 
thousand  dollars, — his  own  earning, — placed  to  his  account 
in  the  savings  bank. 

Three  of  his  brothers  were  happily  married.  They  had 
not  only  taken  every  precaution  which  their  religious  train¬ 
ing  suggested  in  choosing  their  companions,  but  had  been 
guided  by  the  wise  counsels  and  the  judgment  of  their  ad¬ 
mirable  mother.  Not  so  Eugene :  he  had  been  attracted  by 
the  fair  face  and  lively  manners  of  the  only  daughter  of  a 
neighboring  family,  and  had  set  his  heart  on  marrying  her, 
without  much  consulting  his  parents  in  the  matter.  This 
was  the  very  point  where  he  failed  in  his  duty,  and  in  which 
a  prudent  mother’s  judgment  and  advice  would  have  saved 
his  life  and  happiness  from  utter  shipwreck. 

Henrietta  B - ,  being  an  only  daughter  among  six  chil¬ 

dren,  had  been  allowed  her  own  way  from  infancy.  She 
had  been  a  sickly  child,  and  her  natural  peevishness  and 
hatred  of  all  restraint  had  been  at  first  tolerated  on  account 
of  her  many  ailments.  When  she  arrived  at  girlhood 
she  became  the  pet  of  the  whole  family.  Innocent,  open- 
hearted,  impetuous,  her  sallies  and  outbursts  of  temper 
were  laughed  at  by  her  brothers,  and  overlooked  by  the  too 
4 


50 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


fond  and  indulgent  mother,  in  the  hope  that  her  real  good¬ 
ness  and  piety  would  shake  off  these  imperfections  as  the 
girl  grew  into  the  woman,  just  as  the  heated  metal  in  the 
furnace  purges  off  its  dross  at  a  high  temperature. 

Unfortunately,  the  pure  gold  of  her  nature  was  subjected 
by  her  unwise  parents  to  no  sort  of  tempering  or  chastening 
of  any  kind,  and  the  dross  remained  there  to  give,  in  due 
course  of  time,  its  coloring  and  quality  to  the  gold  which  it 
was  sure  to  overlie  and  conceal. 

Eugene’s  mother  had  detected  this  want  of  training  in 
her  future  daughter-in-law,  and  warned  her  son  in  the  mild¬ 
est  and  most  affectionate  manner,  that  she  feared  his  hap¬ 
piness  would  not  be  safe  in  the  keeping  of  a  woman  who 
was  not  sweet-tempered,  and  who  was  also,  she  suspected, 
selfish  and  vain  in  no  common  degree. 

Passion  is  blind  and  deaf  and  headlong.  The  mother’ s 
warning  was  mistaken  for  prejudice  and  resented  as  a  foul 
wrong  done  to  the  loved  object.  It  only  served  to  impel 
Eugene  to  hire  and  furnish  a  comfortable  residence,  and  to 
hasten  his  marriage  with  Henrietta,  without  any  regard  to 
his  father  or  his  mother’ s  advice  to  weigh  well  the  question. 
There  was  added  to  this  want  of  filial  reverence  a  total  neg¬ 
lect  of  the  duties  which  piety  toward  God  imposes  on  Cath¬ 
olics  in  the  reception  of  the  august  sacrament  of  matrimony. 
It  was  treated  by  the  bridegroom  and  the  parents  of  the 
bride  as  a  eeremony  on  which  religion  does  indeed  bestow  a 
blessing,  but  which,  after  all,  is,  in  too  common  estimation, 
but  a  joyous  family  festivity. 

Still,  not  without  admonition  from  his  venerable  father, 
from  the  admirable  mother  who  had  taught  him  his  duties 
well,  and  from  his  married  brothers,  did  Eugene  fail  to  im¬ 
plore  on  his  own  nuptials  the  blessing  of  that  God  and  Lord 
without  whose  aid  they  “  labor  in  vain”  who  set  about 
building  up  the  house  of  their  own  prosperity  and  happi¬ 
ness.  The  honeymoon  was  soon  ended ;  but  before  the 
end  Eugene  had  discovered  that  the  woman  of  his  choice 
was  but  little  like  his  own  mother — from  whose  lips,  amid 
all  her  cares  and  unceasing  activity,  he  had  never  heard  one 


HOW  WOMAN’S  SELFISHNESS  RUINS  THE  HOME.  51 

loud  word  ;  whose  sweet  features,  even  when  under  bodily 
or  mental  pain,  he  had  never  seen  clouded  for  a  moment 
with  anger  or  passion  of  any  kind.  To  him,  to  all  his 
brothers,  as  to  her  doting  husband,  that  dear  mother  of  his 
had  ever  been  a  true  companion,  sharing,  from  infancy 
upward,  his  every  joy  and  hope  and  fear,  receiving  his  un¬ 
bounded  confidence,  as  if  his  whole  soul  had  been  laid  bare 
to  her  motherly  eye.  And  she  was  more  than  companion  : 
she  was  a  friend,  a  counselor,  directing  his  studies,  encour¬ 
aging  his  ambition,  and  guiding  his  labors. 

But  his  pretty  wife,  though  loving  him  as  well  as  she  knew 
how,  expected  him  to  devote  himself  to  her  every  caprice, 
while  she  had  never  been  taught  to  devote  herself  to  any  one, 
or  to  seek  any  other  s  happiness  at  the  expense  of  her  own 
comfort.  In  his  mother’ s  home,  which  resembled  a  beehive 
where  every  inmate  worked  from  early  dawn  till  sunset, 
amid  the  most  perfect  order  and  the  pleasant  hum  of  happy 
voices, — Eugene  had  been  accustomed,  at  his  return  from 
each  day’ s  toil,  to  find  the  bright  faces  of  mother  and  sisters 
all  aglow  with  the  welcome  of  true  affection.  His  room,  like 
those  of  his  brothers,  was  the  picture  of  restful  comfort ;  and 
a  sisterly  hand,  the  whole  year  round,  would  daily  place  a 
tiny  vase  of  fresh  flowers  beneath  the  picture  of  the  Virgin 
Mother  over  his  mantel.  The  supper  or  dinner  table  was, 
in  the  truest  sense,  a  feast  of  soul  much  more  even  than  a  re¬ 
past  for  the  body,  to  all  the  members  of  the  household.  La¬ 
bor  gave  to  each  a  keen  appetite  for  the  delightful  meal,  and 
a  hearty  relish  for  the  warmth,  the  joyousness,  and  the  deep 
repose  of  that  most  blessed  fireside.  So  much  so,  that  the 
young  men  as  they  grew  up  could  not  bear  to  be  away  from 
that  family  board  at  which  true  love  presided. 

Eugene  expected,  most  naturally,  that  the  woman  he  had 
chosen  from  among  all  women  would  hold  toward  him  the 
place  of  mother  and  sister,  just  as  he  resolved  to  be  for  his 
young  bride  the  tenderest  and  most  devoted  of  husbands, 
compensating,  by  the  thousand  devices  of  his  affection,  for 
the  loss  to  her  of  her  parents,  home,  and  kinsfolk. 

The  first  week  of  their  home-life  had  not  passed,  ere  Eugene 


52 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


discovered,  to  liis  dismay,  that  not  only  there  was  no  com¬ 
panionship  between  them,  but  that  Henrietta  was  totally 
careless  of  her  husband’ s  comfort,  totally  untrained  to  the 
management  of  a  household,  and  averse  to  every  thing 
relating  to  domestic  cares. 

Her  husband’s  business  was  a  thriving  one;  he  loved  it, 
and  was  now  more  than  ever  ambitious  to  push  his  way  to 
the  foremost  rank  as  a  mechanician.  His  past  economies 
had  been  nearly  exhausted  by  the  furnishing  of  his  little 
home  and  the  lavish  expenditure  of  his  month  of  honey¬ 
moon.  He  had  returned  to  his  workshop  with  a  new  zest  for 
exertion,  and  bent  himself  to  the  task  before  him  with  all 
the  more  ardor  that  he  hoped  to  find  praise  and  encourage¬ 
ment  from  her  to  whom  he  had  given  his  life. 

As  he  came  back  from  his  work  on  the  very  first  day  after 
resuming  it,  his  hands  and  face  covered  with  the  honorable 
dust  and  stains  of  his  toil, — his  heart  was  chilled  by  the 
greeting,  “  Oh !  dear  !  how  dirty  you  are  !  Do  go  and  wash 
and  change  before  anyone  sees  you!”  Hor  did  she  ac¬ 
company  him  as  he  hastened,  with  a  strange  sensation  at  his 
heart,  to  comply  with  his  wife’s  desire.  Hot  so  had  he  been 
ever  treated  in  the  old  home  by  the  noble  woman  he  called 
mother,  to  whom  his  begrimed  face  and  soiled  hands  had 
always  been  a  motive  for  a  warmer  and  more  loving  wel¬ 
come  home.  When  he  had  put  on  his  wonted  home- clothes 
he  found  his  wife  surrounded  with  a  bevy  of  young  female 
friends.  They  had  dined,  without  waiting  for  him  ;  nor  did 
Henrietta  so  much  as  offer  to  accompany  her  husband  to  his 
cold  and  solitary  meal. 

When  the  evening  was  over,  the  young  mistress  of  the 
home  complained  of  a  headache,  complained  of  the  intolera¬ 
ble  length  of  the  day,  without  having  her  husband  to  con¬ 
verse  with  her  and  amuse  her,  and  ended  by  declaring  that 
she  thought  the  lot  of  a  mechanic’ s  wife  a  hard  one.  There 
was  not  the  slightest  attempt  at  cheering  him  after  his  long 
day  of  unusual  exertion,  brightened,  too,  by  the  thought  of 
the  sweet  rest  he  looked  forward  to  at  its  close. 

The  days  and  weeks  which  followed  only  served  to  dispel 


IIOW  WOMAN’S  SELFISHNESS  RUINS  THE  HOME.  53 


one  illusion  after  another.  True  love  is  founded  on  esteem, 
as  esteem  rests  on  respect ;  when  respect  fails,  there  is  no 
ground  for  love.  Poor  Eugene  was  soon  doomed  to  discover 
that  his  young  wife  was  utterly  untrustful,  and  had  not 
the  slightest  scruple  in  deceiving  him,  even  where  deception 
was  unnecessary.  What  would  he  not  have  given  to  open  his 
heart  to  his  mother  and  take  counsel  with  her  on  the  terri¬ 
ble  difficulty  which  beset  his  path  in  life  at  the  beginning  ! 
But  he  knew  that  one  of  the  rules  inculcated  by  his  parents 
on  all  their  married  children  was  never  to  allow  their  do¬ 
mestic  trials  to  be  made  known  outside  their  own  roof  ;  and 
especially,  not  to  have  the  families  of  husband  or  wife 
made  acquainted  with  secret  troubles,  which  the  young 
people  must  themselves  learn  to  settle  between  them  and 
beneath  the  eye  of  God. 

Eugene’s  mother  had  studied  Henrietta’s  disposition  care¬ 
fully,  and  read  clearly  in  her  son’ s  sad  and  thoughtful  face 
how  it  fared  with  him  and  his  wife.  In  her  first  visits  to 
her  daughter-in-law  she  discovered  the  whole  truth ;  but 
with  admirable  tact  she  not  only  concealed  the  grief  she 
felt,  but  forced  herself  to  praise  every  thing  she  saw  in 
Henrietta’s  management,  feigning  to  see  in  the  single  ser¬ 
vant’s  handiwork  the  result  of  the  mistress’s  housewifery. 
She  feigned  to  believe  that  the  latter  superintended  in  per¬ 
son  her  kitchen,  pantry,  and  laundry,  and  would  go  to  help 
Henrietta  there,  forcing  the  other  thereby  to  see  how  every 
detail  of  domestic  economy  should  be  managed ;  she  had 
the  choicest  and  most  fragrant  flowers  brought  from  her 
own  house  to  Eugene’s,  and  made  his  favorite  sister,  Mar¬ 
garet,  plan  and  dispose  them  where  they  should  best  thrive 
and  be  most  ornamental,  culling  a  little  bouquet  of  the  most 
delicate  for  Henrietta’s  own  room,  and  another  for  the  din¬ 
ner  table,  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  course.  Music  was  Hen¬ 
rietta’  s  sole  accomplishment,  and  Eugene,  himself  a  profi¬ 
cient  on  the  violin,  was  gifted  with  a  voice  of  uncommon 
power  and  sweetness.  His  fond  mother  purchased  his  fa¬ 
vorite  songs,  and  wished  to  hear  the  young  people  play  and 
sing  together  on  the  very  first  evening  she  and  her  husband 


54 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


spent  with  them.  But  Henrietta  pretended  a  headache,  and 
would  neither  sing  nor  play.  Nor,  for  months  after  their 
union,  could  she  be  coaxed  to  sit  at  her  piano.  The  other 
pious  industries  of  her  mother-in-law  were  equally  unavail¬ 
ing  ;  she  never  set  her  foot  in  her  kitchen,  though  not  born 
far  above  her  cook,  nor  ever  busied  herself  with  any  one  of 
the  household  duties.  Her  one  servant  had  to  do  every 
thing  or  to  let  it  alone. 

More  than  that :  she  hated  Eugene’ s  mother  and  his  sis¬ 
ters  for  their  very  virtues,  and  took  the  very  first  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  telling  her  husband  that  she  hoped  his  mother 
would  stay  at  home  and  keep  her  daughters  there,  as  she 
did  not  intend  to  allow  any  one  to  teach  her  what  she  had 
to  do  in  her  own  house. 

And  so  the  clouds  gathered  and  grew  darker  above  that 
little  home,  which  had  been  unhallowed  by  the  blessing  of 
Him  who  should  ever  be  first  and  middlemost  and  last  in 
the  thoughts  and  designs  and  affections  of  those  who  call 
themselves  his  children.  The  gulf  which  had  been  opened 
by  the  young  wife’s  utter  selfishness  between  her  husband 
and  herself  grew  wider  day  by  day.  His  spirit  drooped,  his 
business  was  neglected ;  his  first  babe  was  born  in  his  fa¬ 
ther-in-law’s  house,  whither  his  wife  persisted  in  going  some 
weeks  before  her  illness.  To  her  husband’ s  home  she  never 
returned  !  In  his  turn,  Eugene  found  its  solitude  intolera¬ 
ble,  and  sought  solace  and  distraction  elsewhere.  Happy 
had  it  been  for  him  if  he  had  betaken  himself  in  his  dark¬ 
est  hour  to  the  light  and  warmth  of  his  mother’ s  hearth ! 
He  yielded  to  far  different  attractions  ;  and  soon  the  house 
to  which  he  had  taken  his  bride  was  closed,  and,  like  a 
forsaken  dwelling  in  a  valley  inundated,  it  was  swept  away 
with  all  his  substance  by  the  ill  fortune  which  ever  follows 
fast  on  the  heels  of  ill  conduct.  The  wretched  young  man 
migrated  to  California,  where  he  soon  perished,  broken  in 
heart  and  energy  ;  while  his  wife  continued  in  her  parents’ 
home  to  nurse  her  idle  regrets,  and  to  accuse  the  dead  of 
the  ruin  and  the  misery  which  were  of  her  own  making. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


THE  WIFE  IN  THE  CHEISTIAN  HOME. 

Man  first  enters  on  the  forest  of  life  from  the  paternal  house,  where,  if  tbs 
will  of  God  were  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven,  the  divine  commandments 
would  he  known  and  dear  and  familiar  to  all ;  for  the  precept  was  thus  given  : 
Thou  shalt  tell  them  to  thy  children ,  and  thou  shalt  meditate  upon  them  sitting 
in  thy  house,  and  walking  on  thy  journey,  sleeping  and  rising.  And  thou  shalt 
bind  them  as  a  sign  on  thy  hand,  and  they  shall  be  and  shall  more  between  thy 
eyes.  And  thou  shalt  write  them  in  the  entry  and  on  the  doors  of  tliy  house. 
Such  is  the  ideal  of  the  Catholic  home  ;  and  wherever  this  type  is  realized,  it  is 
evident  that  its  members  are  even  already  in  possession  of  the  truth  and  of 
the  blessed  life  which  constitute  the  pledge  of  the  supreme  good  of  man. — 
Kenelm  Dijby,  Compitum. 

The  Church,  among  her  solemn  benedictions,  had  one  for 
every  dwelling-house,  being  the  same  for  that  of  the  poorest 
man  and  for  that  of  the  wealthiest,  for  the  lowliest  cottier 
on  his  little  plot  of  ground,  as  well  as  for  the  royal  palace. 
Just  as  she  lovingly  blessed  and  guarded  near  her  temples 
the  bodies  of  her  children  without  distinction  of  rank,  even 
so  she  was  desirous  of  hallowing  by  her  prayers  every  spot 
in  city  or  in  country  where  her  dear  ones  were  born  and 
reared,  and  where  she  would  have  God’ s  angels  live  with 
them  as  their  unseen  guardians,  companions,  and  helpers. 

“We  send  up  our  supplication  to  Thee,  O  God  the  Al¬ 
mighty  Father  (one  form  of  blessing  begins)  in  behalf  of  this 
dwelling,  of  all  who  live  therein,  and  of  all  things  within 
it ;  praying  that  thou  do  bless  and  sanctify  it,  and  till  it 
with  all  good  things.  Grant  them,  O  Lord,  plenty  from  out 
the  dew  of  heaven,  the  sustenance  of  life  from  out  the  fat  of 
the  earth,  and  fulfill  their  desires  in  thy  mercy.  On  our 
entering  this  house,  therefore,  do  thou  deign  to  bless  and 

55 


56 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


sanctify  this  abode  as  thon  didst  vouchsafe  to  bless  the  house 
of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob :  and  within  these  walls  let 
the  angels  who  behold  thy  light  abide,  to  guard  this  home 
and  its  inmates.” 

Another  ancient  benediction  added :  “  Abide  ye  in  peace 
in  your  home  :  may  the  Lord  grant  you  rest  and  peace  and 
comfort  from  all  your  enemies  round  about !  May  he  bless 
you  from  his  throne  on  high,  as  you  rest  or  walk,  sleeping 
and  waking ;  and  may  your  family  flourish  to  the  third 
and  fourth  generation!”  Elsewhere  the  Roman  Ritual 
says  in  another  form  of  blessing:  “ Bless,  O  Lord,  God 
Almighty,  this  house,  that  in  it  may  abide  health,  chastity, 
victory,  fortitude,  humility,  goodness  angi  meekness,  the 
fullness  of  the  law,  and  thanksgiving  toward  God  the  Father, 
and  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost.” 

In  the  design  of  God’s  fatherly  providence,  as  well  as  in 
the  intention  of  the  Church,  the  Christian  family-home  is 
a  place  “ blessed  and  sanctified,”  over  which,  with  its  in¬ 
mates,  angels  keep  watch  and  ward.  This  divine  protection 
and  angelic  watchfulness  secure  “  peace,”  and  safety  from 
all  surrounding  dangers  ;  the  blessing  is  fruitful  in  4  ‘  health  ’ 5 
of  body  and  soul,  in  that  purity  of  life  which  renders  the 
inhabitants  of  the  home  worthy  of  being  the  fellow-servants 
and  citizens  of  the  angels,  in  victory  over  self,  in  that  forti¬ 
tude  which  ever  strengthens  man  to  bear  and  to  forbear,  in 
that  humility  which  keeps  us  like  little  children  in  presence 
of  the  Divine  Majesty,  in  “ goodness  and  meekness,”  in  the 
loving  accomplishment  of  the  law  which  is  only  the  expres¬ 
sion  of  his  will,  and  in  devout  gratitude  toward  that  Trinity 
of  Persons  whose  blissful  society  in  the  life  to  come  is  to  be 
the  completion  and  reward  of  the  home-life  sanctified  and 
made  most  happy  by  every  duty  fulfilled. 

In  thus  setting  forth  the  sanctity  of  the  Christian  home, 
and  the  exalted  nature  of  the  duties  and  the  virtues  which 
should  adorn  it,  we  are  only  endeavoring  to  recall  men’s 
minds  to  the  venerable  ideals  so  dear  to  our  fathers,  and 
to  those  u ancient  paths”  from  which  modem  free-thinking 
would  lead  the  young  generation  to  stray. 


WOMAN’S  DUTIES  AS  WIFE. 


57 


ANGELS  GUAED  THE  CATHOLIC  HOME. 

It  is  for  every  father,  who  is  by  the  divine  law  of  nature, 
king  in  his  own  family,  to  consider  well  the  truth  here 
presented  to  him,  and  to  conceive  of  his  own  little  kingdom 
the  pure  and  lofty  notion,  which  is  that  of  the  divine  mind 
as  well  as  the  mind  of  the  Church.  When  a  father,  though 
never  so  poor,  firmly  believes  that  his  little  home  and  his 
hearth-stone  are  a  thing  so  precious  and  so  holy  that  God 
will  have  4  4  his  angel  keep,  cherish,  protect,  visit,  and  defend 
it,  and  all  who  dwell  therein,”  he,  too,  will  lift  up  his  eyes 
and  his  heart  to  that  Father  over  all  and  most  loving  Master, 
and  exhort  himself  daily  and  hourly  4  4  to  walk  before  Him 
and  be  perfect.” 

But  it  is  to  his  companion, — the  queen  of  that  little  king¬ 
dom,  the  wife, — that  it  is  most  necessary  to  have  high  and 
holy  thoughts.about  the  sacredness  of  her  charge,  the  obli¬ 
gations  incumbent  on  her,  the  incalculable  good  which  she 
can  do,  and  the  many  powerful  helps  toward  its  accomplish¬ 
ment  that  the  All- Wise  and  Ever-Present  is  sure  to  multiply 
under  her  hand. 

To  every  true  man  and  woman  now  living  there  is  no 
being  on  earth  looked  up  to  with  so  pure,  so  deep,  so  grate¬ 
ful,  so  lasting  a  love,  as  a  mother.  Let  us  look  at  our 
mother,  then,  in  that  dear  and  holy  relation  of  wife  which 
she  bears  to  him  who  was  for  us  in  childhood  the  repre¬ 
sentative  of  the  God  44  of  whom  all  paternity  in  heaven  and 
earth  is  named.” 


woman’s  duties  as  wife. 

The  first  duty  of  the  wife  is  to  “study  to  be  in  every  way 
she  can  the  companion,  the  help,  and  the  friend  of  her  hus¬ 
band.  Indeed  on  her  capacity  to  be  all  this,  and  her  earnest 
fulfillment  of  this  threefold  function  depends  all  the  happi¬ 
ness  of  both  their  lives,  as  well  as  the  well-being  of  the 
whole  family.  Hence  the  obligation  which  is  incumbent  on 
parents  providing  for  the  establishment  of  their  children, — 


58 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


to  see  to  it,  so  far  as  is  possible,  that  the  person  chosen  to 
be  a  wife  in  the  new  home  should  be  a  true  companion  for 
their  son,  a  true  helpmate  in  all  his  toil,  and  a  faithful 
friend  through  all  the  changes  of  fortune. 

t 

SHE  OUGHT  TO  BE  A  COMPANION  TO  HEE  HUSBAND. 

One  half  of  the  unhappiness  of  married  life  comes  from 
the  fact  that  the  wife  is  either  unfitted  or  unwilling  to  be  a 
true  companion  to  her  husband.  This  companionship  re¬ 
quires  that  she  should  be  suited  by  her  qualities  of  mind 
and  heart  and  temper  to  enter  into  her  husband’ s  thoughts 
and  tastes  and  amusements,  so  as  to  make  him  find  in  her 
company  and  conversation  a  perfect  contentment  and  de¬ 
light. 

Persons  who  are  perfectly  companionable  never  weary 
of  each  other, — indeed,  they  are  never  perfectly  happy 
while  away  from  each  other  ; — they  enter  into  each  other’ s 
thoughts,  reflect  (and  increase  by  the  reflection)  the  light 
in  each  other’ s  mind  ;  cultivate  the  same  tastes,  pursue  the 
same  ideals,  and  complete  each  other  in  the  interchange  of 
original  or  acquired  knowledge. 

But  there  is  more  than  that  in  the  companionship  of  the 
true  wife.  She  studies  to  make  herself  agreeable,  delight¬ 
ful,  and  even  indispensable  to  him  who  is  her  choice  among 
all  men.  If  true  love  be  in  her  heart,  it  will  suggest  to  her, 
day  by  day,  a  thousand  new  devices  for  charming  the  leisure 
of  her  husband. 

Woman  has  been  endowed  by  the  Creator  with  a  mar¬ 
velous  fertility  of  resource  in  this  respect :  it  is  an  unlim¬ 
ited  power,  productive  of  infinite  good  when  used  for  a 
holy  purpose  and  within  her  own  kingdom  ;  but  produc¬ 
tive  of  infinite  evil  when  employed  in  opposition  to  the  de¬ 
sign  of  the  Giver,  or  allowed  to  lie  idle  when  it  should  be 
used  to  promote  the  sacred  ends  of  domestic  felicity. 

There  are  wives  who  will  study  certain  languages, 
sciences,  arts,  or  accomplishments,  in  order  to  make  them¬ 
selves  the  companions  of  the  men  they  love,  and  thus  be 


THE  WIFE  MUST  BE  A  TRUE  COMPANION. 


59 


able  to  converse  with  them  on  the  things  they  love  most,  or 
to  charm  the  hours  of  home  repose  by  music  and  song. 
The  writer  of  these  lines  remembers,  that,  while  a  young 
priest  in  Quebec,  upward  of  thirty  years  ago,  he  was  much 
struck  by  seeing  a  young  lady  of  one  of  the  best  families 
there,  applying  herself  assiduously  to  study  the  sign-lan¬ 
guage  of  the  deaf-mutes  in  order  to  converse  easily  with  her 
husband — a  wealthy  young  merchant,  thoroughly  trained 
himself  in  the  admirable  Deaf  and  Dumb  Institution  of  his 
native  city.  They  were  devoted  to  each  other,  and  the 
young  wife’ s  earnestness  in  making  herself  companionable 
to  her  husband,  must  have  brought  many  a  blessing  on  the 
home  in  which  the  writer  beheld  them  so  wrapt  in  each 
other,  so  virtuous,  and  so  full  of  bright  hope  ! 

It  must  not  be  concluded  from  this,  that  a  woman  who 
applies  herself  to  acquire  knowledge  for  the  purpose  of 
being  more  of  a  companion  to  her  husband,  should  thor¬ 
oughly  master  either  a  language,  a  science,  or  an  art.  .  .  . 
In  the  case  of  the  young  wife  just  mentioned,  a  thorough 
familiarity  with  the  language  of  signs  was  indispensable  as 
a  means  of  easy  conversation  with  her  husband.  But  this 
is  evidently  an  exceptional  case  ; — and  is  only  mentioned  to 
show  what  difficulties  love  will  overcome  to  be  helpful  or 
agreeable  to  its  companion. 

The  word  helpful,  just  used,  will  furnish  to  every  wife 
the  true  measure  of  the  knowledge  she  may  be  prompted  to 
acquire.  Her  husband  has  to  know  perfectly  whatever  he 
knows,  because  his  success  as  a  professional  man  or  a  busi¬ 
ness  man  depends  on  this  thorough  knowledge,  whereas  his 
wife  only  acquires  to  please  and  to  help  her  companion. 

But  there  are  other  things  beside  this  scientific,  literary, 
or  artistic  knowledge,  which  may  be  more  needful  to  a  wife, 
if  she  would  make  herself  of  all  earthly  beings  the  most 
delightful  and  necessary  companion  to  her  husband.  She 
must  study  him, — his  needs,  his  moods,  his  weak  as  well  as 
his  strong  points, — and  know  how  to  make  him  forget  him¬ 
self  when  he  is  moody  and  selfish,  and  bring  out  every  joy¬ 
ous  side  of  his  nature  when  he  is  prone  to  sadness.  God, 


60 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


who  has  made  the  soul  both  of  man  and  of  woman,  and  who 
has  united  them  in  the  duties  and  burdens  of  home-life, 
wills  that  they  should  complete  each  other.  Man  has 
bodily  strength,  because  it  is  his  duty  to  labor  for  the  home 
and  protect  it ;  he  has  also  certain  mental  and  moral  quali¬ 
ties  which  woman  does  not  need,  and  which  fit  him  for  the 
battle  of  life  and  his  continual  struggle  with  the  crowd. 
But  she  has,  on  her  part,  far  more  of  fortitude,  of  that 
power  to  bear  and  to  forbear,  to  suffer  silently  and  uncom¬ 
plainingly  herself  while  ministering  with  aching  heart  and 
head  to  the  comfort,  the  cheerfulness,  the  happiness  of  all 
around  her. 

At  any  rate,  she  has  by  nature  the  "power,  the  art,  and 
the  disposition  to  please,  to  soothe,  to  charm,  and  to  cap¬ 
tivate.  It  is  a  wonderful  power ;  and  we  see  daily  women 
exerting  it  in  a  wonderful  way  and  for  purposes  that  God 
cannot  bless,  and  that  every  right  conscience  must  con¬ 
demn.  Why  will  not  women  who  are  truly  good,  or  who 
sincerely  strive  to  be  so,  not  make  it  the  chief  study  of  their 
lives  to  find  out  and  acquire  the  sovereign  art  of  making 
their  influence  as  healthful,  as  cheering,  as  blissful  as  the 
sunlight  and  the  warmth  are  to  their  homes  S 

Let  us  give  an  example  of  what  is  meant  here — and  this 
illustration  will  suggest,  of  itself,  many  other  applications. 
We  all  know — a  mother  more  than  any  one  else — what  a 
potent  spell  praise  is  in  making  children  master  whatever 
they  are  learning,  and,  what  is  far  more  difficult,  acquire 
a  mastery  over  themselves,  both  in  repressing  wrong  incli¬ 
nations  and  in  gaining  the  habits  of  the  noblest  virtues.  A 
word  of  praise  from  a  mother  will  stir  the  heart  of  every 
well-born  child — and  few  children  are  ill-born,  that  is,  with 
radically  bad  dispositions — to  the  most  extraordinary  exer¬ 
tions,  and  fill  the  whole  soul  with  delight,  when  that  word 
is  sweetly  spoken  of  successful  efforts  made.  We  say  no¬ 
thing  here  of  the  stimulus  which  praise  from  the  queen  of 
the  home  gives  to  the  zeal  and  conscientious  labors  of  ser¬ 
vants. 

We  are  concerned  with  the  master  of  the  home.  Do  you 


THE  WIFE’S  “  COMPANIONSHIP”  ILLUSTRATED. 


61 


not  know  that  all  men,  even  old  men,  even  the  proudest 
and  coldest  men,  are  only  great  children,  who  thirst  for 
praise  from  a  wife,  a  mother,  or  a  sister’s  lips?  There  are 
men — and  they  are  the  noblest,  the  most  high-sonled — who 
care  bnt  little,  if  anything,  for  the  praise  or  censure  of  the 
crowd,  even  of  the  learned  or  titled  crowd  ;  but  their  heart 
is  stirred  through  all  its  depths  by  one  sweet  word  from  the 
lips  of  mother,  sister,  or  wife.  Why,  0  women,  are  you  so 
niggard  of  a  money  which  you  can  bestow  without  making 
yourselves  the  poorer,  and  which  your  dear  ones  prize  above 
gold  and  gems  ? 

Give  generously,  but  discerningly,  what  is  held  so  dear 
as  coming  from  you,  and  which  will  only  encourage  those 
you  love  above  all  the  world  to  strive  to-morrow  for  still 
higher  excellence,  and  look  forward  to  still  sweeter  praise. 

THE  PHILOSOPHER  HUSBAND. 

Without  unlocking  the  door  of  a  home  dear  to  the  hearts 
of  American  Catholics,  and  on  whose  hearthstone  the  fire  is 
now  quenched  forever — we  can  say  here  that  the  most  illus¬ 
trious  of  our  Catholic  publicists  was  ever  prompt  to  attribute 
to  his  wife  much  of  the  success  of  his  writings.  She  was 
in  truth, — so  say  those  who  were  admitted  to  the  intimacy 
of  the  great  philosopher, — in  her  gentleness  and  simplicity 
by  the  side  of  his  sturdy  and  robust  nature,  like  the  Tine 
wedded  to  the  elm ;  apparently  all  weakness  and  depend¬ 
ence,  drawing  her  life  from  the  strong  man  on  whom  she 
leant.  But  she  gave  more  life  than  she  received ;  she  im¬ 
parted  to  her  companion  confidence  in  his  own  judgments, 
firmness  and  constancy  of  purpose  through  all  the  vicissi¬ 
tudes  of  his  trying  existence. 

He  was  a  proud  man ; — but,  like  all  who  have  been 
most  buffeted  by  public  opinion,  he  was  easily  and  deeply 
touched  by  the  praise  of  those  whose  judgment  he  valued 
and  whose  sincerity  he  had  no  reason  to  distrust. 

He  would  often  say  that  he  was  never  sure  or  perfectly 
satisfied  with  what  he  was  preparing  for  the  press,  till  he 


62 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


had  submitted  it  to  his  little  wife  and  obtained  her  approba* 
tion.  Her  admirable  common  sense  had  been  one  of  the 
qualities  which  won  his  esteem  when  he  first  knew  her, 
— and  that  sure  sense  continued  to  be  through  life  his  chief 
guide  and  stay.  A  word  of  hearty  praise  from  her  would 
inspire  him  with  a  youthful  enthusiasm,  give  fresh  vigor  to 
his  thought  and  eloquence  to  his  pen,  even  when  past  his 
sixtieth  year.  The  praise,  and  not  unfrequently  the  admira¬ 
tion  of  two  worlds,  were  not  half  so  sweet  to  him,  as  the 
simple  words  of  that  devoted  wife  and  mother.  4  4  My  dear 
Doctor,  that  is  very  good  !  ”  Nor  would  he  hesitate  to  cast 
aside  or  tear  up  the  pages  which  had  cost  him  most  labor, 
when  she  told  him  that  she  thought  what  he  had  written 
was  dull,  or  not  to  the  point,  or  exaggerated. 

From  his  early  mental  struggles,  all  through  the  phases 
of  his  long  and  not  inglorious  battle  with  error  and  ill- 
fortune,  she  was  the  angel  ever  by  his  side,  consoling,  en¬ 
couraging,  enlightening,  strengthening,  and  guiding  him. 
The  soul  of  his  genius  seemed  to  have  departed  with  her  ; 
and,  though  he  made  a  brave  battle  in  his  last  years  in 
favor  of  the  Church  to  which  he  had  given  his  faith,  and 
against  the  triumphant  errors  of  the  day,  he  felt  that  half 
his  strength  and  half  his  heart  were  in  the  grave  with  his 
loved  wife. 

The  reader  can  offset  this  example  by  calling  to  mind 
wives  who,  though  wedded  to  men  of  the  purest  virtue,  the 
most  heroic  temper,  and  the  most  undoubted  talent,  became 
a  life-long  torture  to  their  husbands,  by  the  absolute  ab¬ 
sence  of  all  the  amiable  qualities  which  make  a  woman 
the  companion,  the  helper,  the  friend  and  counselor  of  her 
husband.  We  have  known  men  who  rose  to  a  proud  pre¬ 
eminence  from  the  lowliest  beginnings  without  ever  finding 
in  the  heart  of  their  wives  one  pulsation  of  sympathy  for 
their  aims,  their  struggles,  their  defeat  or  success ;  who, 
while  suffering  most  bitterly  from  the  inconstancy  or  injus¬ 
tice  of  the  popular  voice,  turned  vainly  to  their  own  home 
for  rest,  or  to  the  mother  of  their  children  for  one  word  of 
sweet  comfort.  We  have  seen  men  on  both  sides  of  the 


THE  WIFE  AS  HELPMATE  IN  THE  HOME.  63 

Atlantic  at  whose  feet  a  whole  people  were  willing  to  lay 
down  the  highest  offices  and  honors  in  their  gift,  and  who 
feared  to  go  from  the  triumph  and  intoxication  of  the 
senate-hall  or  the  public  meeting  to  the  coldness,  the  neg¬ 
lect,  the  misery  which  awaited  them  at  home. 

Surely  such  women, — women  who  turn  to  ashes  and  bit¬ 
terness  the  fairest  and  sweetest  fruits  of  hard- won  success, 
— who  turn  a  home  that  could  and  should  be  a  paradise  into 
a  purgatory, — surely  they  must  expect  a  severe  judgment 
hereafter.  But  even  here  they  are  severely  judged,  and  have 
their  punishment  in  the  censure  of  their  own  household  and 
the  condemnation  of  all  right-minded  persons. 

We  shall  find  other  and  more  touching  examples  taken 
from  the  laboring  classes  and  the  poor,  when  we  shall  have 
concluded  what  is  to  be  said  of  the  wife’s  office  as  friend 
and  counselor.  Let  us  resume  what  we  have  been  saying 
about  companionship.  All  these  arts  and  industries  which 
make  a  woman’ s  companionship  so  dear,  so  useful,  so  ex¬ 
alting  are  only  a  part  of  her  nature,  of  her  true  self,  as  the 
Creator  intends  her  to  be  in  order  that  she  may  shine  in  the 
home  of  her  husband,  and  whose  price  is  from  “far,  and 
from  the  uttermost  coasts.” 

**  Ah,  wasteful  woman  ! — slie  who  may 
On  her  sweet  self  set  her  own  price. 

Knowing  he  cannot  choose  but  pay — 

How  has  she  cheapened  Paradise  ! 

Howr  given  for  naught  her  priceless  gift. 

How  spoiled  the  bread  and  spilled  the  wine. 

Which,  spent  with  due,  respective  thrift, 

Had  made  brutes  men,  and  men  divine  !  ”  * 

THE  WIFE  AS  HELPMATE  IK  THE  HOME. 

In  the  earthly  paradise  of  the  true  Christian  home,  the 
wife  is  a  helpmate,  the  equal  of  her  husband,  neither  his 
inferior  nor  his  servant.  It  is  not  in  such  homes  that  our 
modern  theories  or  discussions  about  “Woman’s  Rights,” 


*  Coventry  Patmore. 


64 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


or  “the  Sphere  of  Woman,”  have  originated.  No  woman 
animated  by  the  Spirit  of  her  Baptism,  filled  with  the 
humility  and  generosity  which  are  the  soul  of  that  self- 
sacrificing  love  indispensable  to  husband  and  wife'  in  the 
performance  of  their  undivided  life -labor, — ever  fancied 
that  she  had  or  could  have  any  other  sphere  of  duty  or 
activity  than  that  home  which  is  her  domain,  her  garden, 
her  paradise,  her  world.  There,  if  she  is  truly  a  wife,  all 
are  subject  to  her,  even  her  husband.  There  never  existed  a 
true-souled  Christian  man  who  did  not  believe  himself  and 
demean  himself  from  his  bridal  hour  till  his  dying  day  like 
a  willing  and  loving  servant  of  his  wife  inside  his  own  home. 

This  is  true  especially  of  the  home  of  the  wealthy  and 
the  great,  where  reigns  and  should  ever  reign  the  infinite 
respect  and  reverence  of  man  for  woman,  in  whom  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  bids  us  see  the  majesty  and  purity  of  her  who 
is  Mother  of  Christ.  There  is  no  excuse  for  the  high-born 
and  the  wealthy,  when  they  fail  to  honor  themselves,  by 
doing  service  inside  their  homes  to  mother,  wife,  and  sister. 
The  difficulty  will  here  be  with  the  poor  man,  the  laboring 
man,  coming  home  at  evening  worn  out  by  the  toil  of  the 
day,  faint  with  hunger  too,  and  fearful  it  may  be  of  the 
morrow.  Has  he  not  to  be  served  rather  than  serve  % 

The  answer  is  an  easy  one,  and  easily  understood,  where 
minds  are  enlightened  and  hearts  are  upright.  If  the  poor 
man’s  wife  has  done  her  duty  throughout  the  day,  she  will 
have  found  in  her  home-work  enough  to  weary.  The  very 
labor  of  preparing  for  her  husband  and  her  sons,  perhaps, 
the  meal  which  is  to  restore  their  strength,  and  the  care  re¬ 
quired  to  brighten  up  that  home  so  as  to  make  it  look  a 
paradise  of  repose  for  them,  —  is  the  task  of  her  who  is 
the  natural  helper  in  the  household — and  whose  blessed 
help  consists  precisely  in  making  the  home  what  it  ought 
to  be,  man’s  heart-rest  from  all  outside  cares. 

But  that  is  enough  about  the  fundamental  notion  of  equal¬ 
ity  between  husband  and  wife,  the  father  and  the  mother 
in  the  Christian  family.  Both  are  necessary  to  each  other, 
they  ought  to  have  but  one  heart  and  one  mind  in  the 


TIIE  WIFE  AS  HER  HUSBAND’S  FRIEND. 


65 


pursuit  of  the  one  great  purpose  of  their  lives, — the  hap¬ 
piness  of  their  home  and  the  rearing  to  the  practice  of  all 
goodness  the  children  whom  God  sends  them.  Under¬ 
standing  this,  their  only  true  position  toward  each  other, 
the  husband  never  can  entertain  any  notion  of  domineering 
over  his  wife,  nor  the  wife  feel  any  sense  of  servile  inferior¬ 
ity  toward  her  husband. 

But  the  love  which  binds  her  to  him  is  an  enlightened 
love  which  makes  her  view  their  respective  labors  as  only 
two  distinct  parts  of  one  task.  Beside  all  that  she  accom¬ 
plishes  in  ordering,  brightening,  and  warming  the  home, — 
there  are  a  thousand  ways  in  which  she  can  be  a  helpmate 
to  her  husband,  beyond  what  is  required  for  mere  compa¬ 
nionship. 

For  it  is  one  thing  to  be  delightful  company  to  a  person 
one  is  traveling  with,  by  being  able  to  converse  with  him  in 
his  own  language,  or  to  discuss  with  him  every  favorite 
topic,  or  to  enter  into  his  recreations  and  amusements  with 
zest,  and  thus  to  lighten  the  weariness  of  the  road  and 
charm  away  its  dullness ;  and  another  to  be  a  helper. 
One’s  companion  may  fail  in  strength,  or  be  beset  with 
dangers  and  difficulties: — and  then  it  is  that  the  office  of 
the  helper  begins. 

It  is  precisely  when  man’ s  heart  fails  him,  and  his  courage 
yields  to  disappointment  or  difficulty,  that  woman  comes 
to  his  aid.  And  if  this  help  is  most  sweet  and  welcome 
and  above  all  price  in  moments  of  professional  weariness, 
of  business  difficulties,  or  when  all  seems  dark  and  bleak 
and  hopeless  to  the  stoutest  heart, — how  much  more  valua¬ 
ble  is  it  in  matters  which  concern  the  soul’ s  welfare,  in  trou¬ 
bles  of  the  heart,  in  the  dark  and  stormy  hours  of  temptation  ! 

But  we  must  not  trench  on  the  next  and  dearest  function 
of  wifely  love, — that  of  being  the  truest  and  most  faithful 
of  friends. 

THE  WIFE  AS  HER  HUSBAND’S  FRIEND. 

A  story  very  apposite  to  our  purpose  is  told  by  a  writer 
of  the  middle  ages.  A  man  who  wished  to  make  a  visit  to 
5 


66 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Cologne,  famed  at  that  time  as  a  pilgrimage,  possessing  as 
it  did  the  tomb  of  the  Three  Wise  Kings.  He  was  a  wealthy 
man,  but  not  a  wise  one.  He  had  an  admirable  wife,  whose 
worth  he  knew  not,  and  whose  company  he  neglected  for 
that  of  two  neighbors,  who  played  friends  with  him  because 
he  was  rich  and  lavish  of  his  money.  As  he  was  setting  out 
on  his  pilgrimage,  he  asked  his  friends  what  he  should 
bring  them  from  Cologne :  one  answered  that  he  would  like 
a  rich  cloak,  and  the  other  begged  him  to  buy  a  tunic  of 
rare  stuff.  He  next  asked  his  wife  what  he  should  get  for 
her,  and  she  besought  him  to  bring  back  sense  and  wisdom 
which  might  enable  him  to  see  and  correct  the  evil  of  his 
ways. 

After  having  paid  his  devotions  at  the  shrine  of  the  Three 
Kings,  he  went  among  the  merchants,  bought  the  cloak  and 
the  tunic,  but  sought  in  vain  for  some  one  who  would  sell 
him  sense  and  wisdom.  They  were  not  to  be  found  in  the 
market.  As  he  returned  crestfallen  to  his  inn,  the  host  in¬ 
quired  why  he  seemed  downcast,  and,  learning  the  cause, 
advised  him  on  his  return  home  to  pretend  to  his  friends 
that  he  had  lost  all  his  money  and  could  give  them  neither 
cloak  nor  tunic.  He  followed  this  piece  of  advice,  and  both 
of  the  false  friends  turned  him  out  of  doors,  abusing  him  as 
a  fool  and  a  vagabond. 

Not  so  his  wife,  however :  he  told  her  the  story  of  his 
loss  ;  but  she,  seeing  that  he  was  w~eary  from  the  road  and 
filled  with  sorrow  and  indignation  because  of  this  ill  treat¬ 
ment,  tenderly  embraced  him,  consoled  and  refreshed  him, 
assured  him  that  God  would  send  him  heavenly  treasures 
for  the  money  he  had  lost.  So  his  eyes  were  opened  to 
know  what  wealth  he  possessed  in  her  true  love  and  faithful 
friendship;  and  thus  did  he  “find  sense  and  wisdom  from 
3iaving  visited  the  City  of  the  Three  Kings.”  * 

‘  4  What  is  friendship  ?  ’  ’  asks  Alenin,  and  he  answers 
forthwith,  “  A  similitude  of  souls.”  Where  the  wife  labors 
conscientiously  to  be  a  true  companion  to  her  husband, 
there  is  little  fear  but  she  will  also  become  a  true,  faithful, 


*  Joannes,  Magnum  Speculum,  12. 


THE  WIFE  AS  HER  HUSBAND’S  FRIEND. 


67 


and  constant  friend.  For  tlie  successfnl  effort  made  to 
establish  perfect  companionship  must  end  in  effecting  that 
“  similitude  of  souls,”  which  constitutes  the  essence  and 
ground  of  friendship. 

The  reasons  which  will  urge  every  right-minded  and  true¬ 
hearted  woman  to  be  the  most  delightful  and  constant  of 
companions  and  the  most  devoted  of  helpmates,  must  also 
inspire  her  with  the  resolution  of  being  the  most  cherished 
of  friends.  She  must  not  be  jealous  of  the  men  for  whom 
her  husband  entertains  feelings  of  real  friendship.  On  the 
contrary,  it  were  wise  to  vie  with  him  in  showing  them  every 
mark  of  regard,  as  if  she  were  thereby  the  interpreter  of  his 
dearest  wishes.  Nothing  pleases  a  man  more  than  to  see 
his  old  and  true  friends  warmly  acknowledged  and  treated 
with  all  honor  and  affection  by  the  persons  most  dear  to  him. 

This,  however,  is  only  a  passing  admonition  to  which 
every  woman  who  is  careful  of  her  home-duties  will  do  well 
to  attend.  It  is  not  only  virtue  but  good  policy  in  a  wife  to 
have  the  sincere  good-will  and  respect  of  all  who  consider 
themselves  to  be  her  husband’s  friends.  Not  only  will  they 
contribute  much  to  the  pleasantness  of  the  home  in  which 
they  are  always  welcome  and  honored  guests,  but  they  will 
not  fail  to  spread  far  and  wide  the  fame  of  its  hospitality 
and  the  good  name  of  its  mistress. 

It  happens  but  too  often  that  women  will  take  it  into 
their  heads  to  regard  the  friends  of  their  husband  as  persons 
who  steal  away  a  heart  which  should  exclusively  belong  to 
themselves,  and  through  an  unwise  and  narrow  jealousy 
make  themselves  odious  and  their  homes  intolerable  to  men 
whom  they  ought  to  conciliate  and  to  bind  to  themselves. 
More  than  one  wife  has  lost  for  ever  the  heart  of  her  hus¬ 
band  and  destroyed  the  peace  of  her  fireside  by  such  insane 
conduct. 

Let  the  young  and  the  wise  take  warning  therefrom,  and 
learn  betimes  how  a  true  wife  can  be  •  the  counselor,  the 
guide,  as  well  as  the  sanctifier  and  savior  of  her  husband. 
And  here  let  a  practical  example  dispense  us  from  pursuing 
the  subject  further. 


68 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


THE  CARPENTER’S  WIFE  A  TRUE  WIFE. 

John  and  Eliza  H - were  both  natives  of  England,  and 

came,  with  their  infant  son,  to  settle  in  one  of  our  thrifty 
manufacturing  towns  in  1849.  He  had  learned  the  trade 
of  a  house  carpenter,  had  had  remunerative  employment  in 
London,  but,  being  ambitious  to  rise  to  something  higher, 
had  come  to  America  with  the  hope  of  improving  his  knowl¬ 
edge  and  becoming  in  time  an  architect.  His  education, 
unfortunately  for  his  design,  had  never  gone  beyond  that 
of  an  ordinary  common  school,  while  his  wife,  who  had 
studied  in  one  of  the  excellent  normal  schools  taught  in 
England  by  the  Sisters  of  Notre  Dame  de  Namur,  had  grad¬ 
uated  there  with  the  highest  honors,  and  had  further  im¬ 
proved  her  opportunities  by  perfecting  herself  in  drawing 
and  other  branches  taught  gratuitously  in  the  government 
schools.  The  young  people  had  known  each  other  from 
childhood,  and  their  union  was  one  of  deep  and  pure  affec¬ 
tion.  They  were  also  most  exemplary  in  the  fulfillment  of 
all  their  religious  duties.  The  husband  was  too  proud  of 
his  young  wife,  and  too  sincerely  devoted  to  her  to  consent 
to  her  accepting  even  the  most  advantageous  position  as 
school-teacher.  He  had  set  his  heart  on  rising  in  the  world, 
and  would  be  the  sole  provider  for  his  family  and  the  sole 
artificer  of  their  fortunes. 

During  the  first  ten  months  of  their  stay  in  America  every 
thing  went  well  with  them,  and  John’s  emoluments  far  ex¬ 
ceeded  his  household  expenses — exceeded,  indeed,  anything 
which  he  could  have  looked  forward  to  at  home.  He  found, 
however,  that  men  of  his  craft  in  America  had  received  an 
education  superior  to  his,  and  that  his  inferiority  in  this 
respect  was  a  serious  bar  to  his  advancement.  At  this  point 
began  the  incomparable  services  rendered  to  him  by  his 
wife.  She  proposed  to  devote  a  few  hours  daily,  after  his 
return  from  work,  to  teaching  him  all  that  she  knew  her¬ 
self.  It  was  a  loving  offer,  lovingly  accepted,  and  love 
seemed  to  quicken  the  intellect  both  of  teacher  and  pupil, 


THE  CARPENTER'S  WIFE  A  TRUE  WIFE. 


69 


the  progress  made  by  John  being  marvelously  rapid.  God 
also  blessed  these  studies,  for  the  two  never  began  or  ended 
a  lesson  without  kneeling  to  implore  the  divine  light.  It 
was  a  habit  acquired  in  school  and  kept  up  through  life  by 
both  the  one  and  the  other. 

Six  months  had  not  elapsed  since  the  beginning  of  these 
lessons,  when  John’s  expertness  as  a  draughtsman  astonished 
his  companions  and  employers  and  obtained  him  promotion. 
But  he  did  not  relax  his  home  studies.  Not  a  little  of  his 
spare  money  was  used  to  purchase  the  best  works  on  archi¬ 
tecture,  and  the  young  man  applied  himself  many  months 
with  enthusiasm  to  mastering  every  detail  of  that  great 
science, — especially  all  that  pertains  to  design  and  construc¬ 
tion.  His  wife,  who  now  left  him  to  himself,  was  neverthe¬ 
less  made  the  companion  of  all  this  preparatory  labor.  He 
could  not  bear  to  have  her  out  of  his  sight  while  he  was 
making  a  plan,  or  calculating  the  strength  of  such  and  such 
building  materials.  A  second  child  came  to  gladden  the 
pair,  while  thus  toiling  together  beneath  the  eye  of  God. 
And  almost  simultaneously  with  the  birth  of  their  babe  a 
new  blessing  wa,s  sent  to  them.  It  was  proposed  to  build  a 
new  church  in  a  remote  part  of  the  State,  and  John,  after 
visiting  the  locality,  had  sent  in  a  plan  so  well  conceived, 
and  an  estimate  of  costs  with  specifications  so  carefully 
drawn  up,  that  the  construction  of  the  church  was  awarded 
to  him. 

This  was  J ohn’ s  first  triumph ;  it  called  forth  his  utmost 
gratitude,  but  it  did  not  make  him  proud.  He  referred  his 
success  to  the  Divine  Author  of  every  blessing,  to  whom 
both  he  and  his  wife  had  most  humbly  and  earnestly  recom¬ 
mended  it ;  and,  after  God,  he  thanked  his  dear  helper  and 
mistress,  whose  teachings  and  encouragement  and  bright 
affection  had  given  him  both  the  light  to  know  how  to  do 
his  new  work,  and  the  unfailing  courage  to  undertake  and 
accomplish  it.  She  had  a  little  oratory  in  her  bedroom,  with 
a  water-color  painting  of  one  of  Fra  Bartolomeo’ s  sweetest 
Madonnas  executed  by  herself,  hangings  of  exquisite  em¬ 
broidery  the  work  of  her  own  hands,  a  lamp  of  beautiful 


70 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


design  fed  with  the  purest  olive  oil,  and  rare  fragrant  flowers 
which  she  cultivated  in  honor  of  her  dear  Mother.  The 
little  framework  with  its  carving  and  illuminations  was  the 
work  of  John’s  chisel.  There  they  offered  up  together  their 
night  and  morning  devotions ;  and  there  John  knelt  when 
he  received  the  tidings  of  his  success,  reciting  with  over¬ 
flowing  heart  the  Te  Deum ,  while  his  little  wife  made  the 
responses  from  her  sick-bed. 

With  the  first  triumph  came  also  their  first  trial — their 
first  separation.  For  the  building  of  the  church  required 
that  the  architect  should  be  often  on  the  spot ;  and  beside 
his  being  charged  with  the  construction,  he  w^as  most  anxious 
that  this,  his  first  building,  should  be  perfect ;  so  far  as  his 
skill  and  care  could  make  it.  It  was  a  terrible  trial  for 
these  young  hearts.  The  clergyman  for  whom  John  was 
building,  though  not  of  his  own  faith,  was  much  interested 
in  him.  He  was  shocked  not  a  little  at  first  to  hear  of 
John’s  going  on  Sundays  to  the  far-off  little  Catholic  mis¬ 
sion-chapel,  and  his  trustees  murmured  at  having  a  Roman¬ 
ist  to  superintend  the  building  of  their  beautiful  and  costly 
church.  But  the  gentleness  of  the  young  man,  his  constant 
attendance  at  the  works,  his  perfect  control  over  the  work¬ 
men,  the  exceeding  beauty  of  his  own  designs  as  well  as  of 
the  carpenter’s  work,  which  he  began  to  have  executed  in 
advance  for  the  interior  of  the  edifice,  and,  above  all,  the 
comparative  cheapness  of  all  that  he  did,  soon  silenced  the 
murmurers. 

What  most  touched  the  clergyman,  however,  was  the 
yearning  which  the  architect  felt  for  his  home,  and  the  emo¬ 
tion  he  could  not  conceal  when  speaking  of  his  wife.  The 
enterprise  was  happily  brought  to  a  close,  and  a  handsome 
donation  in  money,  with  a  vote  of  thanks  from  the  parish¬ 
ioners,  was  added  to  the  price  orignally  stipulated.  There 
was  more  than  that :  during  the  progress  of  the  works  the 
name  of  the  architect  was  mentioned  so  favorably  in  clerical 
circles,  and  the  quality  of  his  work  elicited  such  genuine 
admiration,  that  he  was  asked  for  designs  for  two  other 
churches. 


THE  CARPENTER'S  WIFE  A  TRUE  WIFE. 


71 


His  enforced  absence  from  home  now  seemed  to  the  hus¬ 
band  and  father  so  painful  a  sacrifice,  so  great  a  loss  of  all 
that  a  true  man  holds  most  dear,  that  he  began  to  repent 
him  of  the  ambition  which  had  impelled  him  to  soar  above 
his  carpenter’ s  craft :  the  reputation  he  had  already  acquired 
and  the  brilliant  fortune  which  smiled  upon  him  seemed 
too  poor  a  compensation,  he  thought,  for  the  loss  of  that 
dear  companionship  of  his  wife,  his  friend,  his  instructress  ; 
for  the  caresses  of  his  babes,  and  all  the  bliss  of  the  peace¬ 
ful  and  sunny  home  for  which  his  soul  thirsted  continually. 

Still,  when  he  mentioned  his  regrets  to  his  wife,  she  would 
not — though  her  heart  was  oppressed  by  the  prospect  of 
these  long  and  frequent  separations — allow  him  to  repine  or 
draw  back  from  the  career  on  which  he  was  but  entering. 
Without  giving  up  their  home,  rendered  doubly  dear  to 
both  by  their  first  struggles  and  John’s  apprenticeship  for 
his  present  profession,  Eliza  resolved  to  be  with  him  as 
much  as  possible  during  the  fine  season.  She  wrote  to  him 
daily,  sometimes  twice  a  day,  cheering  him  and  encour¬ 
aging  him  especially  to  be  more  than  ever  faithful  to  those 
solid  and  soul-nourishing  practices  of  piety,  which  main¬ 
tain  the  union  of  our  spirit  with  the  Spirit  Creator,  and  give 
us  the  confidence  to  undertake  and  the  power  to  accomplish 
every  thing  planned  for  his  glory  and  in  accordance  with 
the  duties  of  our  avocation. 

You  are  impatient  to  know  the  end,  gentle  reader.  It 
shall  soon  be  told.  Just  as  John  was  carrying  out  the  most 
important  of  all  his  constructions,  an  accident  in  his  work¬ 
shop  (for  he  would  persist  in  designing  himself  all  decora¬ 
tions  in  woodwork,  and  in  carving  what  was  most  difficult 
and  delicate)  maimed  his  right  hand  for  life.  Thencefor¬ 
ward  he  could  never  handle  the  chisel  or  the  pencil.  And 
hitherto  he  had  not  had  any  assistants  or  cared  to  form  pupils. 

The  blow  was  a  heavy  one  to  him,  and  all  his  prospects 
seemed  to  him  blighted  forever.  His  wife  was  soon  by  his 
side,  however,  to  comfort  and  reassure  him.  She  could 
draw,  she  said,  if  he  could  not,  and  he  could  direct  her  in 
filling  up  any  design  demanded  of  him.  As  his  studies  in 


72 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


architecture  had  been  carried  on  in  her  company  and  with 
her  guidance  and  co-operation,  she  was  more  competent 
than  he  thought  in  all  that  pertained  to  his  profession  ;  in¬ 
deed  it  was  to  her  sure  and  excellent  taste  that  he  owed, 
without  being  aware  of  it,  the  originality  and  purity  of  his 
architectural  designs. 

So  the  young  wife  and  mother,  acting  under  the  inspira¬ 
tion  of  her  love,  and  responding  to  his  unbounded  belief  in 
her  capacity,  not  only  studied  architectural  drawing  under 
her  husband’ s  eye,  but  induced  him  to  advertise  for  assist¬ 
ants  and  apprentices,  and  soon  found  herself  with  no  less 
than  six  remarkable  young  men  studying  her  husband’s 
noble  profession  in  his  house  and  under  their  joint  superin¬ 
tendence. 

Alas,  the  season  of  unhoped-for  prosperity  which  ensued 
was  but  of  too  brief  a  duration.  Eliza  had  been,  at  the 
time  to  which  our  narrative  has  brought  us,  twelve  years 
in  America — twelve  years  of  unmixed  happiness  springing 
from  a  love  which  increased  with  each  successive  year,  be¬ 
cause  each  year  revealed  in  the  wife  some  new  perfection 
her  husband  had  not  discovered,  some  treasure  of  goodness 
more  precious  than  any  possessed  till  then.  Five  children 
surrounded  the  board  of  the  proud  fond  mother  ;  and  every 
one  of  them  she  was  herself  educating.  After  the  birth  of 
her  sixth  child  her  health  failed  ;  no  scientific  skill  availed 
to  stay  the  progress  of  the  insidious  disease  which  had  de¬ 
clared  itself. 

Her  death  was  indeed  a  spectacle  for  angels  and  men  to 
admire.  To  the  last  she  would  have  her  husband  by  her 
side,  comforting  him,  instructing  and  strengthening  him 
with  a  sweet  and  glowing  eloquence  which  borrowed  its 
light  and  warmth  from  the  near  vision  of  eternity. 

He  was  not  crushed,  because  she  seemed  to  have  breathed 
into  him  in  dying  her  own  heavenly  spirit  of  resignation. 
He  understood  that  he  must  now  take  up  her  work,  and  be 
to  his  six  orphans  both  father  and  mother.  He  was  rich 
enough  to  give  up  his  profession  ;  and  devoted  himself  en¬ 
tirely  to  the  education  of  his  dear  ones. 


THE  CARPENTER’S  WIFE  A  TRUE  WIFE. 


73 


There  was  one  service — greater  than  all  the  others — for 
which  the  widowed  husband  never  ceased  to  thank  her  wdio 
had  been  to  him  companion,  helpmate,  and  friend  ;  she  had 
saved  him  from  his  own  weakness.  During  his  frequent  ab¬ 
sences  he  had  by  degrees  contracted  convivial  habits,  which 
tilled  her  with  unspeakable  alarm.  She  eventually  proved 
his  savior ;  but  it  is  only  consummate  tact  and  a  love  full 
of  tender  and  most  patient  reverence  for  the  diseased  soul 
that  can  render  the  intemperate  willing  to  he  saved.  Eliza’ s 
ascendency  over  the  heart  which  had  never  known  any 
other  love  than  hers,  was  that  of  the  mother  over  a  sick 
babe,  which  yields  itself  absolutely  to  the  loved  voice,  the 
tender  hand,  and  the  encircling  arms. 

Would  that  every  wife  who  reads  this  book  may  thus 
learn  to  be  to  her  husband  a  friend  and  a  savior !  She 
would  thus  be  most  truly  the  Angel  of  the  Home,  keeping 
the  steps  of  all  within  it  from  straying  to  the  right  or  the 
left,  and  guiding  them  through  life  toward  the  blissful 
goal  of  their  pilgrimage.  Speaking,  as  we  do  throughout 
this  book,  not  of  the  monastic  life  of  spiritual  perfection, 
self-crucifixion,  and  apostolic  labor,  but  of  the  home-life 
which  is  the  nursery  of  true  men  and  women,  both  for  the 
common  paths  of  worldly  toil  and  duty,  and  for  that  other 
higher  and  more  perfect  road,  we  can  safely  say  of  the  re¬ 
sults  of  a  Christian  wife  or  mother’s  training:  “No  man 
ever  lived  a  right  life  who  had  not  been  chastened  by  wo¬ 
man’  s  love,  strengthened  by  her  courage,  and  guided  by  her 
discretion.” 

Looking  to  the  influence  for  all  good  and  honor  and  great¬ 
ness  that  a  wife,  in  God’ s  design,  is  capable  of  exercising 
over  her  husband,  and  to  the  implicit  obedience  that  every 
true-hearted  husband  yields  through  life  to  her  he  has  made 
queen  of  his  home, — we  cannot  but  place  here  the  beautiful 
words  of  a  living  author:*  “Chivalry,  to  the  original 
purity  and  power  of  which  we  owe  the  defense  alike  of 
faith,  of  law,  and  of  love,  .  .  .  assumes  that  in  this 

rapturous  obedience  (of  the  husband)  to  the  single  love  of 


*  Buskin. 


74 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


his  youth,  is  the  sanctification  of  all  man’s  strength,  and 
the  continuance  of  all  his  purposes. 

“  You  cannot  think  that  the  buckling  on  of  the  knight’s 
armor  by  his  lady’ s  hand  was  a  mere  caprice  of  romantic 
fashion.  It  is  the  type  of  an  eternal  truth — that  the  soul’s 
armor  is  never  well  set  to  the  heart  unless  a  woman’ s  hand 
has  braced  it ;  and  it  is  only  when  she  braces  it  loosely  that 
the  honor  of  manhood  fails.” 

The  poor  man  and  the  rich  man,  the  man  destined  to 
labor  all  his  life  as  well  as  the  man  fitted  to  fill  every  public 
trust,  needs  more  than  at  any  period  in  the  past  to  have 
his  wife  arm  him  for  the  daily  battle  against  temptation ; 
against  the  terrible  corruption  and  dishonesty  which  rule 
over  every  class  of  public  men  ;  against  the  contempt  cast 
by  modem  public  opinion  on  all  that  the  Past  held  sacred, 
reverence  for  the  home,  for  the  church  ;  faith  in  God  and  in 
all  that  is  most  capable  to  make  man  God-like ;  against 
Christianity  itself,  and  the  civilization  and  manifold  sancti¬ 
ties  it  created.  Let  every  true  wife  daily  brace  more  and 
more  tightly  round  her  husband’s  heart  the  armor  of  the 
old  principles  which  made  our  fathers  invincible  in  their 
long  battle  against  error  and  wrong. 

Thus  “the  honor  of  manhood”  will  not  fail  among  us,  so 
long  as  every  wife -and  mother  aims  at  being  the  Angel  of 
the  Home. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


DUTIES  OF  THE  WIFE  AS  THE  DISPENSED  OF  THE  HOME 

TREASURES. 

Wlio  shall  find  a  valiant  (brave-hearted)  woman?  .  .  The  heart  of  her 

husband  trusteth  in  her.  .  .  She  hath  sought  wool  and  flax,  and  hath  wrought 
by  the  counsel  of  her  hands.  .  .  She  hath  tasted  and  seen  that  her  traffic  is 

good  :  her  lamp  shall  not  be  put  out  in  the  night.  .  .  She  hath  opened  her 

hand  to  the  needy,  and  stretched  out  her  hands  to  the  poor.  She  shall  not  fear 
for  her  house  in  the  cold  of  snow. — Proverbs  xxxi. 

Nothing  so  animates  the  head  of  a  family  to  honorable 
exertion  as  the  certainty,  that  his  wife  bestows  her  utmost 
care  in  providing  for  the  comfort  of  his  home,  in  dispensing 
wisely  the  store  which  he  places  at  her  disposal ;  making  it 
her  rule  to  be  just  to  him  by  never  exceeding  his  means 
when  she  cannot  increase  them  by  her  industry,  in  being 
just  to  her  children  by  supplying  them  with  becoming  rai¬ 
ment,  food,  and  instruction,  just  to  her  servants,  whom  she 
treats  with  a  motherly  tenderness  which  never  condescends 
to  familiarity; — and  just  to  God’s  poor,  whose  claims  she 
holds  to  be  most  sacred. 

But  let  us  proceed  understandingly.  The  first  care  of 
the  wife  is  to  establish  discipline  and  order ; — discipline, 
without  which  there  may  be  much  noise  and  agitation,  but 
no  work  done and  order,  because  where  there  is  confu¬ 
sion  every  thing  is  out  of  place,  or  done  out  of  its  proper 
time.  To  have  discipline, — where  there  are  children  and 
servants,^ — the  mistress  must  have  authority,  and  she  must 
assert  and  establish  her  authority  by  being  both  firm  and 
calm,  and  giving  every  one  to  understand  that  she  means 
what  she  says,  and  that  what  she  says  must  be  done. 


75 


76 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Order  means  that  every  work  must  be  done  in  its  proper 
time,  and  every  thing  in  the  house  be  put  in  its  proper 
place.  Order  means  economy  both  of  time  and  of  labor. 
For  where  every  occupation  has  its  own  appointed  time, 
the  household  duties  are  sure  to  be  attended  to  and  to  be 
fulfilled  with  singular  ease  and  pleasure. 

If  this  order  and  economy  of  time  are  necessary  in  large 
households,  it  is  still  more  so  in  the  home  of  the  poor  man, 
where  every  thing  has  to  be  done  single-handed  by  the  wife. 
There  are  poor  households, — those  of  the  daily  laborer,  the 
poor  tradesman,— where  the  wife,  with  a  large  family  of  chil¬ 
dren  to  care  for,  will  quietly  get  through  an  amount  of  work 
of  different  kinds  that  would  seem  to  require  the  joint  en¬ 
ergy  of  several  persons.  Gfo  into  these  bright  and  orderly 
homes,  where  the  housewife  rests  not  from  early  dawn  till 
long  after  sunset  of  the  longest  day,  and  see  the  cleanliness, 
the  tidiness,  the  calm  and  the  contentment  that  fill  the  place 
like  an  atmosphere ! 

Of  course  there  will  be  comfort  for  all  where  there  is  such 
order.  For  there  can  be  comfort  with  poverty,  or  at  least 
with  little,  though  never  with  want.  There  will  be  comfort 
for  the  husband  when  he  returns  to  that  bright,  warm, 
pleasant  hearth,  where  the  deep  love  of  his  companion  fills 
the  house  with  a  spiritual  fragrance  more  pleasant  than  all 
the  flowers  of  spring ;  there  will  be  comfort  at  the  simple 
meal  set  on  the  board  shining  with  cleanliness ;  and  there 
will  be  comfort  in  the  sweet  conversation  in  which  the  out¬ 
side  world  is  forgotten,  in  the  joy  of  being  all  in  all  to  each 
other ;  and  there  will  be  bliss  in  the  night’ s  rest  won  by 
hard  and  hearty  toil,  and  undisturbed-  by  peevish  ambi¬ 
tion  or  by  the  dreams  of  a  spirit  at  war  with  God  or  the 
neighbor. 

There  will  be  loveliness,  too,  in  the  home  where  true  love 
causes  order  and  comfort  to  reign.  For  the  poorest  room 
can  be  made  lovely  by  a  woman’s  cunning  hand.  She  can 
have  flowers  at  her  window,  and  flowers  on  her  mantel  and 
her  table.  And  the  curtains  of  windows  and  beds  may  be 
beautified  by  some  simple  ornament  devised  by  a  woman’s 


MAN  RESPONSIBLE  FOR  HIS  STEWARDSHIP. 


77 


taste  and  executed  in  spare  moments  by  the  hand  of  even 
the  busiest. 

There  is  not  one  among  the  readers  of  this  book  but  has 
seen  such  homes — albeit  lowly,  narrow,  and  poor  in  the 
literal  sense — in  which  this  order,  comfort,  and  loveliness 
gave  the  beholder  the  evidence  of  a  womanly  spirit  that 
might  have  graced  a  palace.  This  remark,  however,  is  only 
preliminary  to  what  pertains  to  the  wife’s  stewardship  in 
her  home. 

MAN,  IN  EVEEY  CONDITION,  RESPONSIBLE  FOE  HIS 

STEWARDSHIP. 

We  must  not,  especially  in  an  age  which  tends  daily 
more  and  more  to  deny  that  man  owes  any  account  to  God 
for  the  use  of  the  wealth  he  chances  to  possess — whether 
that  be  inherited  from  his  ancestors,  or  obtained  by  his  own 
thrift  and  industry — be  carried  away  by  the  torrent  of  error. 
No  matter  whence  derived,  all  that  man  has  as  well  as 
all  that  he  is  belongs  to  God — his  Creator  and  Lord  and 
Judge ;  and  to  Him  must  he  return  to  give  an  account  of 
the  use  which  he  will  have  made  of  his  being,  his  life,  his 
time,  his  property.  Reason,  even  without  the  light  of  su¬ 
pernatural  revelation,  teaches  this  truth  as  fundamental 
and  unquestionable. 

The  great  and  the  rich  will  have  to  account  for  their 
stewardship, — for  the  uses  to  which  they  have  put  their 
time,  their  riches,  their  power,  their  influence,  their  oppor¬ 
tunities,  just  as  the  laboring  poor  will  have  to  account  for 
their  thrift,  and  the  awful  uses  to  which  one  may  see,  day 
by  day,  our  hard-working  heads  of  families  put  their  earn¬ 
ings  in  drunkenness,  gambling,  and  all  manner  of  vice. 

But,  as  we  have  said,  it  is  the  province  of  the  housewife 
to  be  at  home  a  wise  steward  in  the  use  of  her  husband’s 
means,  while  his  chief  business  is,  outside  of  the  home,  to 
procure  these  means  by  honorable  industry.  Both  are  re¬ 
sponsible  to  God.  The  wife’s  immediate  responsibility  how¬ 
ever  is  toward  her  husband.  She  is  his  minister,  his  eye, 


78 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


his  hand,  his  head  and  heart,  in  applying  his  wealth  or  the 
produce  of  his  industry  to  the  ends  for  which  God  wills  it 
to  be  employed. 

THE  STEWARDSHIP  OF  THE  WEALTHY  WIFE. 

Of  persons  of  royal,  princely,  or  noble  rank,  we  do  not 
think  it  necessary  to  treat  in  this  place.  We  speak  of 
wealth  wheresoever  it  exists,  and  of  the  duties  and  respon¬ 
sibilities  of  the  wife  in  its  home-uses. 

Hers  should  be  a  wise  economy.  Wisdom  consists  in  a 
clear  perception  of  the  ends  or  uses  for  which  money  is  to 
serve,  and  in  the  careful  adaptation  of  one’ s  means  to  one’ s 
expenditure.  You  have  so  much  and  no  more  to  spend 
each  week,  or  each  month,  or  each  year  ;  you  have  so  many 
wants  to  provide  for  :  let  your  wisdom  be  proved  by  always 
restraining  your  outlay  so  as  to  have  a  little  balance  left  in 
your  favor. 

We  know  of  a  wife, — a  young  wife  too, — who  after  her 
bridals  was  made  the  mistress  of  a  luxurious  home,  in  which 
her  fond  husband  allowed  her  unlimited  control.  They 
were  more  than  wealthy,  and  his  business  relations  and  pros¬ 
pects  were  such  as  to  promise  certain  and  steady  increase 
for  the  future.  Still  the  young  wife  did  not  allow  herself 
to  be  lavish  or  extravagant.  She  provided  generously  for 
the  comforts  of  her  home,  for  the  happiness  of  her  servants, 
for  the  duties  of  a  generous  hospitality  ;  she  had  an  open 
hand  for  all  charities  and  good  works.  But  she  was  also, 
young  as  she  was,  mindful  of  the  future  ;  and  this  wise  fore¬ 
thought  is  eminently  the  characteristic  of  women.  With¬ 
out  ever  whispering  a  word  of  her  purpose  to  her  husband, 
she  resolved  from  the  beginning  of  their  housekeeping  that 
she  would  lay  by  in  a  safe  bank  her  weekly  economies. 
The  husband,  in  all  likelihood,  would  have  deemed  this 
saving  an  ill  omen,  pointing  to  future  calamity.  It  was, 
however,  only  the  prophetic  instinct  of  the  wise  woman, 
who,  in  the  heat  of  summer  and  the  overflowing  plenty  of 
autumn,  looked  forward  to  “the  cold  of  snow,”  and  made 


THE  STEWARDSHIP  OF  THE  WEAL1HY  WIFE. 


79 


store  for  the  need  and  warmth  and  comfort  of  her  house¬ 
hold. 

The  “  calamity”  came  after  a  good  many  years  ;  it  came 
by  a  fatal  chain  of  circumstances  in  which  the  misfortunes 
or  dishonesty  of  others  brought  ruin  on  the  upright  and 
prudent  and  undeserving.  One  day  the  husband  came 
home  with  heavy  heart,  and  tried  in  vain  to  hide  his  care 
from  the  penetrating  eyes  of  love.  He  had  to  break  to  his 
wife  the  dreadful  news  of  their  utter  ruin.  She  listened 
unmoved  to  his  story  :  “  All  is  not  lost,  my  dear  husband,” 
she  said;  “I  have  been  long  preparing  for  this.  If  you 
will  go  to  such  a  bank,  you  will  find  enough  laid  up  there  to 
secure  us  either  against  want  or  poverty.” 

In  order  to  secure  this  wise  and  provident  economy,  even 
in  the  midst  of  wealth,  two  extremes  must  be  avoided,  par¬ 
simony,  which  destroys  domestic  comfort  and  makes  the 
mistress  of  the  proudest  house  despicable  in  the  eyes  of  her 
cook,  her  butcher,  and  her  grocer, — and  w~aste  or  extrava¬ 
gance,  which  is  ruinous  to  the  largest  fortunes  and  most 
criminal  in  the  sight  of  God.  u  Waste  not — want  not,” 
used  to  be  inscribed  on  the  huge  bread-platters  of  our  fa¬ 
thers,  both  in  the  servants’  hall  and  the  family  dining-room. 
“Waste  not — want  not,”  ought  to  be  the  rule  of  every 
housewife  in  all  departments  of  household  economy. 
Waste  is  always  a  sin  against  God,  against  your  husband 
and  children,  as  well  as  against  the  poor,  who  have  a  right 
to  what  is  thus  thrown  away :  and,  forget  it  not, — waste 
never  fails  to  lead  to  want,  as  surely  as  stripping  a  tree  of 
its  bark  is  followed  by  its  pining  away  and  withering. 

Another  rule,  which  a  wise  woman  will  never  violate,  is 
to  tell  her  husband  when  she  exceeds  her  means  or  allow¬ 
ance.  It  is  fatal  concealment  to  allow  debts  to  accumulate 
without  one’s  husband’s  knowledge  ;  it  tempts  the  woman 
w^eak  enough  to  do  so  to  have  recourse  to  most  unworthy  and 
most  dangerous  expedients,  which  are  sure  to  be  known  in 
the  end,  and  to  lower  the  culprit  or  ruin  her  for  ever  in  her 
husband’s  esteem.  The  equivocations  and  the  downright 
falsehoods  which  are  often  used  as  means  of  concealment, 


80 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


cannot  but  be  considered  by  every  right-minded  man  as  a 
greater  calamity  than  the  accumulation  of  the  largest  debt 
or  the  loss  of  an  entire  fortune'. 

In  this  respect,  as  indeed  in  every  other,  no  concealment 
will  be  found  to  be  the  wife’ s  only  true  policy  ;  and  to  se¬ 
cure  this  policy  of  no  concealment  let  her  make  it  the  study 
of  her  life  to  have  nothing  to  conceal. 


THE  WIFE  THE  DISPENSER  OF  HOSPITALITY. 

To  the  wife’s  stewardship  belongs  also  the  discharge  of  a 
most  important,  not  to  say  most  sacred  duty — that  of  hos¬ 
pitality.  It  is  one  of  the  chief  functions  of  the  divine  virtue 
of  charity.  Of  its  nature,  its  necessity,  and  its  importance 
w’e  do  not  wish  to  discourse  here.  Few  are  the  homes  and 
the  hearts  to  which  hospitality  is  a  stranger.  Those  to 
which  this  book  may  reach  will  easily  understand  what 
the  word  means  without  either  definition  or  description. 
We  can,  therefore,  convey  our  instruction  by  the  simplest 
method. 

Whoever  is  received  into  your  home  as  a  guest — pre¬ 
cisely  because  he  is  your  guest — forget  every  thing  else  to 
make  his  stay  delightful.  It  matters  little  whether  persons 
thus  hospitably  received  may  or  may  not  appreciate  your 
generosity,  your  cordiality,  and  that  true  warmth  of  a  wel¬ 
come  like  yours,  inspired  by  Christian  motives  much  more 
than  by  worldly  reasons  ;  it  matters  much  for  you  that 
none  should  ever  enter  your  home  without  finding  it  a  true 
Christian  home,  or  should  leave  it  without  taking  away  with 
them  the  pleasant  memory  of  their  stay  and  a  grateful  recol¬ 
lection  of  you  and  yours.  Doubtless  some  will  be  found 
whom  no  courtesy,  no  kindness,  no  warmth  of  hospitality  can 
change  from  what  they  are, — little-minded,  narrow-hearted, 
selfish,  cold,  and  unable  to  judge  the  conduct  of  others  by 
any  other  standard  than  their  own  low  thoughts  and  senti¬ 
ments.  They  are  only  like  bats  entering  a  banquet-hall  by 
one  window  and  passing  out  at  the  opposite,  after  having 
fluttered  blindly  about  the  lights,  or  clung  for  a  few  in- 


LEON  DU  COUDRATS  WIDOWED  MOTHER. 


81 


stants  to  the  walls  or  the  ceiling.  Let  them  come  and  let 
them  go.  The  social  and  spiritual  atmosphere  of  the  place 
is  not  for  them. 

Nor  must  yon  complain  of  the  number.  It  is  wonderful 
how  much  place  a  large-hearted  woman  can  find  for  her 
company,  even  in  a  very  small  house  !  A  hospitable  spirit 
can  do  wonders  in  its  way :  it  can  make  the  water  on  the 
board  more  delicious  than  the  wines  of  Portugal,  Spain,  or 
France  or  Italy  ;  it  can  make  the  bread  which  it  places  be¬ 
fore  stranger  or  friend  as  sweet  as  the  food  of  the  gods  ;  it 
can  multiply  its  own  scanty  stores — as  the  Master  did  with 
the  loaves  in  the  wilderness.  For  God’ s  blessing  is  with  the 
hospitable  soul  to  increase,  to  multiply,  and  to  sweeten  ;  to 
fill  all  who  sit  at  her  board  with  plenty,  with  joy,  with 
thanksgiving. 

“  There  is,”  says  Digby,  u  a  castle  on  the  Loire  held  by 
a  lady  of  ascetic  piety  and  of  noble  fame,  in  the  latest  pages 
of  French  heroic  annals.  There  one  of  my  friends,  received 
to  hospitality,  finding  many  guests,  supposed  himself  sur¬ 
rounded  by  men  of  illustrious  condition,  till  he  was  in¬ 
formed  that  they  were  all  persons  reduced  to  poverty,  whose 
title  to  familiarity  under  that  roof  was  founded  precisely  on 
their  indigence  and  misfortunes.”  * 

Ah,  noble  France,  how  many  other  homes  along  the 
Loire,  the  Mayenne,  the  Sarthe,  and  the  Somme  do  we  not 
know  which  are  always  open  to  the  stranger  and  the  pilgrim 
from  other  lands,  while  their  generous  masters  and  mis¬ 
tresses  deem  every  sacrifice  a  blessing,  because  performed 
for  Christ  present  in  the  guest  of  one  day,  or  one  week,  or 
one  month  ! 

LEON  DU  COUDRAY’S  WIDOWED  MOTHER. 

More  than  one  eye  will  read  this  page  and  share  the  feel¬ 
ings  of  the  writer  in  recalling  that  hospitable  home  near 
Laval,  where  the  widowed  mother  of  an  only  son  gave, 
yearly,  hospitality  for  two  whole  weeks  to  fifty  or  more  of  the 


6 


*  Compitum,  book  i.,  chapter  vi.,  p.  177. 


82 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


student-sons  of  St.  Ignatius — young  men  from  Canada  and 
the  United  States  and  New  Granada,  as  well  as  from  Spain 
and  Italy,  from  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  from  France  and 
Germany — nay,  even  from  Russia’s  old  Moscovite  capital. 
How  the  son — not  a  priest  yet,  but  one  who  had  renounced 
a  brilliant  career  in  the  world  for  the  poverty  and  humility 
of  a  Jesuit’s  life — would  daily  invent  new  forms  of  amuse¬ 
ment  and  recreation  with  which  to  make  the  mother’ s  lav¬ 
ish  hospitality  the  more  graceful  and  the  more  charming ! 
How  each  evening  found  that  band  of  apostolic  youths  (re¬ 
minding  one  of  the  “ Schools  of  the  Prophets”  in  the  days 
of  old)  engaged  in  some  new  pastime  on  the  green  sward, 
blending  needful  recreation  after  hard  study  with  some  beau¬ 
tiful  literary  enjoyment !  We  still  hear  the  glorious  tenor 
voice  of  that  thrice-blessed  son,  Leon  du  Coudray,  rising 
above  the  loud  chorus  of  song  and  hymn ;  we  remember  the 
pleasant  open  countenance,  the  ever  sweet  smile,  the  gracious 
words  of  heartfelt  affection,  as  natural  to  the  true-hearted 
youth  as  its  native  notes  are  to  the  nightingale.  And  then 
we  bethink  us,  as  we  just  read  the  latest  accounts  of  his 
heroic  death,  *  of  this  young  man,  become  the  Superior  of 
the  noblest  Christian  school  in  France,  seized  wuth  several  of 
his  brethren  as  a  hostage  by  the  Commune,  and  turning  to 
them  as  they  were  led  to  prison  through  the  streets  of  Paris 
amid  curses  and  insults,  and  saying  aloud  in  the  old  joyous 
tones:  “ Ibant  gaudentes  .  .  .  ‘They  went,  ...  re¬ 
joicing  that  they  were  accounted  worthy  to  suffer’ — is  it  not 
so?”  He  went  as  joyously  to  prison,  that  only  son  of  the 
widowed  mother,  as  ever  bridegroom  to  his  bridals ;  and 
when  the  fatal  24th  of  May,  1871,  had  come,  it  was  on  his 
strong  arm  that  the  Archbishop  of  Paris  leaned,  as  they 
were  hurried  forth  to  be  obscurely  butchered ;  it  was  by 
his  side  that  the  prelate  stood  facing  their  bloodthirsty  exe¬ 
cutioners  ;  and  when  the  first  volley  had  been  fired,  only 
wounding  the  archbishop,  who  fell  to  the  ground,  and  leav- 


*  See  Maxime  du  Camp,  Prisons  de  Paris  sous  la  Commune,  in  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,  1st  September,  1877. 


A  DEVOTED  WIFE  SUSTAINS  IN  DIFFICULTIES. 


83 


inghis  companion  almost  unhurt,  it  was  Leon  du  Con  dray’s 
strong  arm  that  lifted  him  up,  and  on  his  brave  heart  that 
his  sinking  head  was  laid,  when  a  second  volley  mingled 
their  blood  and  freed  both  their  souls  at  once.  Ah,  brave 
heart,  true  heart!  Was  the  widowed  mother  still  living  to 
learn  of  her  martyr’s  death,  and  to  receive  in  the  bitter¬ 
sweet  of  that  so  glorious  ending  the  reward  of  her  profuse 
hospitality  and  of  all  her  Christian  virtues  ?  With  Leon 
perished  and  was  buried  another  young  priest  dear  to  the 
writer  of  these  lines,  Father  Alexis  Clercq,  once  a  navy  of¬ 
ficer,  and,  at  the  time  of  his  arrestation,  a  professor  in  the 
College  S.  Genevieve,  Rue  des  Posies.  The  writer  had 
prepared  him  for  his  first  mass,  and  assisted  him  at  the 
altar  during  its  celebration.  May  they  both  from  near  the 
throne  of  the  Lamb  beseech  a  blessing  on  these  pages,  and 
obtain  for  every  mother  who  reads  them  the  grace  of  being 
not  all  unlike  that  hospitable  widow,  and  of  rearing,  like 
her,  sons  ready  to  sacrifice  life  itself  rather  than  betray 
Christ  and  the  faith  of  their  baptism  ! 

There  are,  however,  examples  nearer  home,  which  if  not 
connected  with  such  tragic  scenes  as  this,  have  also  their 
touching  record  of  heroic  devotion  crowned  by  the  death  of 
the  saints. 

HOW  A  NOBLE  HUSBAND  WAS  SUSTAINED  BY  A  DEVOTED  AVIFE 
WHILE  PASSING  THROUGH  FINANCIAL  DIFFICULTIES. 

One  family  in  particular  will  help  to  teach  the  reader 
that  woman]  y  excellence  is  no  rare  or  recent  flower  on  the 
soil  of  the  New  World:  A  young  wife,  born  among  our 
Western  valleys,  and  wedded  to  the  man  of  her  choice,  had 
encouraged  him  in  a  chivalrous  literary  enterprise  which 
promised  precious  and  plentiful  fruit  for  the  highest  pur¬ 
poses  of  patriotism  as  well  as  religion.  Their  home  had 
been  blessed  by  six  beautiful  children,  reared  by  the  ac¬ 
complished  mother  with'  inconceivable  tenderness  and  care. 
It  had  been  the  delight  of  the  grandparents  to  fill  that 
home  with  every  article  of  furniture  and  object  of  art  which 


84 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


could  make  it  what  it  was  in  reality — a  paradise  for  its 
inmates  as  well  as  for  a  large  and  devoted  circle  of  friends. 

But  the  mind,  the  heart,  and  the  hand  of  the  happy 
young  wife  it  was  which  gave  to  that  home  its  bright  look 
of  refinement,  of  goodness,  of  perfect  happiness. 

One  day,  while  she  and  her  eldest  daughter  were  wreath¬ 
ing  some  flowers  round  the  frame  of  a  favorite  picture,  the 
husband  and  father  came  in,  and  received  from  both  the 
usual  rapturous  welcome.  “  Look,  my  dear,”  the  proud 
little  housewife  exclaimed,  after  the  first  greeting,  “look 
and  see  if  any  thing  can  be  more  beautiful  than  this  room  ! 
Had  we  our  choice  from  the  richest  stores  and  the  rarest  col¬ 
lections  of  art,  what  could  we  add  to  all  this  !  What  dear 
object  could  we  part  with  for  a  better?”  The  fond  hus¬ 
band’  s  eyes  glanced  rapidly  round  the  room  ;  but  they  did 
not  shine  with  the  enthusiasm  which  fired  his  companion’ s. 
A  cloud  of  a  sudden  settled  on  his  brow  as  if  the  question 
caused  a  pang  in  spite  of  the  strong  effort  he  made  to  re¬ 
press  his  emotion.  To  his  wife’s  enthusiastic  queries  he 
only  answered  by  bending  over  her  and  kissing  her  in 
silence. 

She  divined  that  some  misfortune  had  befallen  or  was  im¬ 
pending.  And  he,  who  had  ever,  since  their  wedding-day, 
found  in  her  a  trusty  friend  and  most  wise  counselor, — now 
told  her  that  the  enterprise  which  had  promised  to  be  a 
most  profitable  as  well  as  a  most  beneficial  investment,  had 
proved  a  most  ruinous  failure  ! 

His  friends,  he  said,  had  generously  offered  to  come  to 
his  assistance  and  lend  him  all  the  money  needed  to  meet 
his  engagements.  To  cumber  himself  with  this  debt  or  to 
sell  his  home  and  its  costly  furniture,  was  the  only  alterna¬ 
tive  left  to  them.  He  had  not  had  courage  to  mention  to  her 
till  the  last  moment  the  strait  to  which  he  was  reduced ; 
for  he  feared,  and  their  friends  feared,  lest  the  parting  with 
her  beautiful  home  and  the  loss  of  so  many  precious  things 
should  crush  her. 

“You  cannot  hesitate,  dearest,”  was  the  quick  reply 
“  we  must  part  with  every  thing  rather  than  become  depen- 


/ 


AN  IDEAL  WIFE  AND  HOME.  85 

dent  on  others  by  being  their  debtors.  You  shall  see  how 
easy  it  will  be  to  me  to  part  with  these  treasures,  provided  I 
have  a  little  home  for  you  and  our  darlings,  into  which  no 
creditor  may  intrude  or  pry.  Am  I  not  too  rich  and  too 
happy  with  the  wealth  of  love  you  and  my  children  bring 
tome?” 

There  was  not  a  moment  lost ;  a  little  cottage  was  rented 
in  another  part  of  the  city,  and  only  the  most  needful  arti¬ 
cles  of  furniture  were  provided  for  parents,  children,  and 
servants  ;  the  busy  hands  of  the  young  wife  were  never  idle 
for  several  days  beautifying  the  new  home  for  the  dear 
ones,  who  were  kept,  as  well  as  friends  and  neighbors,  in 
ignorance  of  the  approaching  change ;  and  the  little  ones 
soon  found  themselves  all  of  a  sudden  transported  to  the 
new  nest ! 

Then,  to  the  astonishment  of  all  in  the  neighborhood,  and 
the  regret  of  many,  the  auctioneer  came,  and  piece  after 
piece  of  the  beautiful  furniture — some  of  it  made  by  the  best 
upholsterers  from  the  timber  grown  on  the  paternal  estates 
far  away — the  objects  of  art  and  virtu ,  with  which  the  young 
mother  was  wont  to  illustrate  her  lessons  on  the  beautiful 
given  to  the  oldest  children,  and  the  dear  piano — the  gift  of 
a  fond  mother — all  were  unhesitatingly  sacrificed. 

But  what  was  the  astonishment  of  friends  and  relatives, 
when,  after  a  few  days  of  pity  or  wonderment,  they  called 
on  the  brave  little  woman  in  her  new  home,  to  find  it  so 
fair,  so  bright,  so  beautiful !  The  carpets  were  plain,  it  is 
true,  and  the  furniture  was  of  the  commonest  kind ;  but 
chairs  and  sofas  and  ottomans  had  been  covered  with  a 
chintz  so  pretty  that  no  one  stopped  to  inquire  what  was 
beneath  the  covering.  There  Avere  white  curtains  to  the 
windows,  looped  up  wdth  garlands  of  artificial  flowers,  and 
there  Avere  fragrant  flowers  on  mantels  and  tables  ;  and  the 
little  mistress  was  there  with  her  face  all  aglow  with  happi¬ 
ness,  with  her  sunny  smile  and  merry  laugh,  and  the  warm 
hospitable  welcome  for  every  friend  and  acquaintance;-- 
and  there,  too,  were  the  rosy  children,  as  unconscious  of  any 
change  of  fortune  as  the  happy  guests  of  Aladdin’ s  fairy 


86 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


palaces,  who  found  in  one  snite  of  apartments  objects  so 
ravishing  that  they  quite  forgot  what  they  had  seen  before. 
The  little  ones  saw  no  change  around  them,  save  that  the 
light  of  their  mother’s  smile  was  even  more  sunny  than 
ever,  that  she  loaded  their  dear  father  with  fonder  caresses 
and  called  forth  from  his  big  heart  louder  bursts  of  joy  and 
mirth, — and  that  she  had  been  busier  than  ever  with  her 
active  hands  and  restless  needle  in  transforming  and  beau¬ 
tifying  the  face  of  things  in  every  room  with  the  smallest 
possible  expense. 

The  change  of  residence,  as  well  as  the  circumstances 
which  occasioned  it,  only  served  to  raise  both  husband  and 
wife  in  the  esteem  of  the  community  and  to  inspire  their 
intimate  friends  with  a  warm  admiration  for  their  magna¬ 
nimity.  And  so  the  happy  nestful  increased,  and  the  hus¬ 
band  rose  higher  in  public  confidence  and  in  his  noble 
profession, — while  his  wife  bestowed  her  whole  care  on 
the  lovely  children,  whom  she  educated  herself  in  every 
branch  of  learning  and  in  every  accomplishment  necessary 
or  suitable  to  their  position.  It  was  no  small  labor  ;  but 
she  found  it  light, — such  was  the  order  which  she  had  estab¬ 
lished  in  her  household,  so  sure  was  she  of  the  devoted  zeal 
of  every  one  of  her  servants,  and  so  delightful  did  she  know 
how  to  make  to  her  worshiping  pupils  every  step  in  the 
most  arid  pathways  of  learning. 

And  yet  the  house  was  ever  full  of  visitors.  The  numer¬ 
ous  relatives  belonging  to  both  families  were  always  ex¬ 
pected  to  make  their  home  with  these  good  young  people 
while  in  town  ;  and  there  were  friends  who  could  not  re¬ 
sist  the  attraction  they  felt  for  a  family  which  seemed  to 
them  the  ideal  of  human  felicity.  Limited  as  was  their  in¬ 
come,  neither  the  husband  nor  the  wife  ever  bestowed  a 
thought  on  the  expenditure  consequent  upon  such  an  un¬ 
bounded  and  uninterrupted  hospitality.  The  little  wife 
managed  to  have  a  bountiful  table  at  all  times,  never  an 
extravagant  one ;  and  thus  she  never  once  allowed  her 
household  expenses  to  go  beyond  her  means.  What  made 
her  table,  her  drawing-room,  the  whole  atmosphere  of  her 


THE  WIFE  AS  THE  FRIEND  OF  THE  POOR. 


87 


home  so  full  of  an  undefinable  charm,  was  the  love,  the  in¬ 
nocence,  the  paradisaical  purity  and  charity  which  parents 
and  children  shed  around  them. 

The  dinners  were  true  feasts  of  love  and  joyousness,  and 
the  evenings  in  the  drawing-room  were  festivals  of  song, 
in  which  mother  and  children  had  the  chief  part,  but  in 
which  all  guests  who  could  play  or  sing  were  impelled  to 
join  by  some  powerful  spell. 

Those  who  had  been  privileged  to  share  once  or  twice  in 
this  genuine  hospitality,  or  who  had  been  during  one  or 
two  evenings  under  the  charm  of  that  blissful  family  circle, 
would  yearn  to  return. 

And  now,  it  will  be  asked,  does  this  blessed  home  still 
exist  ?  Alas,  no  !  The  nest  is  empty,  cold,  and  songless. 
Like  many  a  sainted  mother  in  the  past,  the  brave-hearted 
little  woman  could  truly  sing : 

“  I  pray  you,  wliat  is  the  nest  to  me. 

My  empty  nest  ? 

And  what  is  the  share  where  I  stood  to  see 
My  boat  sail  down  to  the  west  ? 

Can  I  call  that  home  where  I  anchor  yet, 

Though  my  good  man  has  sailed  ? 

Can  I  call  that  home  where  my  nest  was  set. 

Now  all  its  hope  hath  failed? 

Nay,  hut  the  port  where  my  sailor  went, 

And  the  land  where  my  nestlings  he  : 

There  is  the  home  where  my  thoughts  are  sent. 

The  only  home  for  me — 

Ah  me  !  ”  * 


THE  WIFE  AS  THE  FEIEND  OF  THE  POOR. 

We  should  have  told  how  dear  to  the  hearts  of  the  poor, 
to  the  hearts  indeed  of  all  who  were  acquainted  with  mis¬ 
fortune  and  suffering  in  any  shape,  was  the  home  into 
whose  privacy  we  have  been  just  glancing, — for  every  heart 
and  every  hand  within  it  were  ever  open  to  the  needy.  We 
may  intersperse  through  these  pages  many  gracious  acts  of 
goodness  and  true  charity  originating  with  the  queen  of 


*  Jean  Ingelow,  “  Songs  of  Seven.” 


88  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

that  blessed  home, — just  as  the  silversmiths  of  old  would 
detach  pearls  and  other  gems  from  an  over-rich  crown  to 
adorn  the  vesture  of  royalty  or  religion.  So  pass  we  now 
to  that  dear  function  of  home-life  in  the  good  old  Catholic 
times. 

And  connecting  here  hospitality  toward  the  poor  with 
almsgiving,  let  us  see  what  was  in  that  respect  the  spirit 
of  the  ages  of  faith.  “ Padua,”  Digby  informs  us,  “had 
forty-five  houses  for  the  entertainment  of  poor  strangers ; 
in  Venice  all  comers  were  entertained  by  many  Doges ; 
and,  above  all,  say  the  old  Italians,  Vicenza  was  distin¬ 
guished  for  its  munificence  toward  needy  strangers.  At 
Venice,  the  senators  who  presided  over  the  public  adminis¬ 
tration  were  so  hospitable  that  the  whole  city  resembled  a 
hotel  for  guests,  and  a  common  home  for  all  strangers  com¬ 
ing  to  it.  At  Cesena  every  one  used  to  dispute  for  the 
honor  of  receiving  the  stranger,  till,  to  obviate  such  quarrels, 
the  pillar  was  erected,  having  a  ring  for  each  noble  family, 
so  that  to  whichever  the  stranger  on  arriving  fastened  his 
horse,  to  that  family  was  he  to  repair.  ‘  Receive  Itindly 
whoever  comes,'  says  St.  Francis  in  his  rule, — the  spirit  of 
which  ruled  many  castles  as  well  as  cloisters — ‘all,  whether 
friend  or  foe,  thief  or  robber .’  We  read,  indeed,  of  one 
proud  castle  standing  near  the  road,  over  the  portal  of 
which  the  knight  who  built  it,  through  the  sole  motive  of 
vanity,  caused  lines  to  be  inscribed  .  .  .  intending  to  signi¬ 
fy  that  no  one  should  be  received  but  knights,  philosophers, 
or  clerks,  or  noble  ladies.  But  the  ancient  legend  states  that 
by  a  terrible  vision  this  knight  was  converted,  and  so  de¬ 
livered  from  his  former  error  that  he  resolved  thenceforth 
to  entertain  rather  the  poor,  effacing  that  inscription  and 
substituting  for  it  words  which  signified  that  the  naked 
and  poor,  the  sick  and  infirm,  and  the  exile  and  the  pilgrim, 
would  be  thenceforth  his  guests.”  * 

In  Brittany  a  most  beautiful  custom  still  exists,  in  spite 
of  modern  legislation,  which  tends  to  forbid  almsgiving  of 


*  Compitum,  b.  i.,  c.  vi. 


THE  WIFE  AS  THE  FRIEND  OF  THE  POOR. 


89 


every  kind,  and  to  prevent  tke  poor,  even  when  they  have 
a  hovel  of  their  own,  from  leaving  it  and  making  their  dire 
need  known  to  their  neighbors.  The  day  following  mar¬ 
riage  is  “  the  day  of  the  poor.”  They  troop  from  every 
side  to  the  door  of  the  happy  pair,  and  find  tables  spread 
for  them  in  the  vast  hall  of  the  nobleman,  when  the  bride¬ 
groom  is  such,  or  on  the  greensward  when  he  is  of  inferior 
degree.  The  tables  for  the  men  are  set  on  one  side,  those 
for  the  women  on  the  other,  the  bridegroom  waiting  on 
the  former,  and  the  bride  attending  to  the  comfort  of  those 
of  her  own  sex.  When  they  have  had  their  fill,  all  dance 
together,  and  then  take  their  leave,  pouring  blessings  on 
their  kind  entertainers.  Surely  such  blessings  and  the 
heartfelt  wishes  and  prayers  of  the  poor  must  be  more 
profitable  to  young  people  entering  on  the  married  state 
and  its  doubtful  fortunes,  than  the  idle  congratulations  of 
a  fashionable  throng,  and  the  selfish  modern  custom  of  has¬ 
tening  from  the  foot  of  the  altar  to  the  railway  train  or 
steamboat,  in  order  to  escape  from  the  irksome  duty  of  re¬ 
ceiving  friends  or  feasting  the  poor. 

If  from  Brittany  you  cross  in  imagination  the  broad  ex¬ 
panse  of  sea  which  separates  the  westernmost  shores  of 
France  from  Spain,  you  will  find  among  another  proud  and 
ancient  race,  the  Basques,  with  a  faith  by  no  means  less 
deep  than  that  of  the  Bretons,  Catholic  notions  about  pov¬ 
erty  and  almsgiving  which  are  full  of  eloquent  meaning. 
Land  at  any  point  of  that  rock-bound  shore,  in  any  one  of 
the  fishing  towns  and  villages  so  famous  all  through  Chris¬ 
tian  history,  and  you  will  see  how  the  few  native  poor,  in  a 
country  where  nobody  is  ever  seen  idle,  are  treated  with  a 
sovereign  respect  and  tenderness.  A  recent  traveler  *  land¬ 
ing  at  the  little  town  of  Elanchove — which  clings  with  its 
one  street  to  the  almost  perpendicular  face  of  a  mountain 
two  thousand  feet  high — saw,  as  he  toiled  up  that  ladder¬ 
like  street,  “a  poor  old  woman  all  bent  double  with  age 
standing  at  a  door  and  asking  for  alms.  A  charming  young 


*  L.  Loiiis-Lande,  Trois  Mois  de  voyage  dans  le  Pays  Basque. 


90 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


married  woman,  her  mouth  all  wreathed  with  smiles,  has¬ 
tened  to  come  out.  I  saw  her  take  from  her  pocket  a  small 
brass  coin,  kiss  it,  and  then  give  it  to  the  old  woman.  The 
latter  took  the  alms,  made  with  it  very  devoutly  the  sign  of 
the  cross  on  herself,  and  then  kissed  it  in  her  turn.  Such 
is  the  custom  throughout  the  Basque  country,  and  does  it 
not  add  a  touching  grace  to  charity  \ ’  ’ 

Such  noble  and  touching  customs  as  this  are  not,  how¬ 
ever,  confined  to  Biscay  or  to  Northern  Spain ;  they  are 
everywhere  characteristic  of  the  Spanish  Catholic.  The 
lofty  spirit  of  self-respect  which  is  the  soul  of  the  Spaniard, 
is  shown  in  the  reverence  with  which  he  treats  the  poor, 
whom  word  or  look  of  his  will  never  humble ;  but  as  his 
faith  teaches  him  to  consider  Christ  himself  present  in  the 
person  of  the  beggar  or  of  the  sick  man,  his  respect  for  them 
becomes  downright  and  heartfelt  veneration. 

It  will  cheer  and  enlighten  us  to  gather  some  of  these 
choice  pearls  of  Spanish  custom  to  deck  our  own  crown  of 
merit  withal.  ‘  ‘  Cheating  and  extortion  seem  incompatible 
with  the  Spanish  character.  Even  the  poorest  peasant  who 
has  shown  us  our  way,  and  who  has  walked  a  considerable 
distance  to  do  so,  has  invariably  refused  to  receive  any  thing 
for  his  services ;  yet  all  are  most  willing  and  anxious  to 
help  strangers.  The  same  liberal  spirit  seems  to  breathe 
through  every  thing,  and  was  equally  shown  at  our  little 
posada  (inn)  at  Elche,  .  .  .  where  a  number  of  maimed, 
blind,  and  halt  collected  daily  to  receive  the  broken  viands 
from  the  table-d’hote,  which  the  mistress  distributed  to 
them,  and  in  the  delicate  blacksmith’s  wife  opposite,  who 
keeps  two  lamps  burning  nightly  at  her  own  expense  before 
the  little  shrine  of  ‘Our  Lady  of  the  Unprotected ’  in  her 
balcony.  The  temporal  works  of  mercy — to  give  bread  to 
the  hungry,  and  drink  to  the  thirsty,  to  take  care  of  the 
sick,  to  visit  prisoners,  and  to  bury  the  dead,  these  are  the 
common  duties  which  none  shrink  from. 

As  I  write,  a  handsome,  dark-eyed  brown  boy  in  rags, 
who  looks  as  if  he  had  stepped  out  of  one  of  Murillo’s  pic¬ 
tures,  is  leaning  against  the  opposite  wall  in  the  moonlight, 


CATHOLIC  CHARITY  SUPERNATURAL. 


91 


watching  a  shrine  of  the  Virgin.  It  is  a  picture  typical  of 
Spain,  ruined  and  superstitious,  but  still  most  beautiful — 
and  so  is  the  cry  of  the  watchman  which  is  ringing  through 
the  silent  air,  ‘Are,  Maria  Santis  sima !  it  is  a  quarter 
to  twelve  o’clock !  ’  ”  * 

Ah,  give  us  back  this  superstition, — this  living  faith  ra¬ 
ther,  which  built  up  Spain  and  Portugal  till  they  were  the 
wonder  of  Christendom.  The  ruin  of  the  Peninsula  is  coeval, 
step  by  step,  with  the  decline  of  that  glorious  spirit  of  44  su¬ 
perstition.”  But  we  can  pardon  this  perversion  of  judg¬ 
ment  in  a  Protestant  who  has  the  eye  to  see  and  the  heart 
to  appreciate  so  much  that  is  beautiful  in  Catholic  customs. 

It  is  well  known  that  from  time  immemorial  the  sove¬ 
reigns  of  Spain  visit  the  hospitals  nearest  to  the  royal  resi¬ 
dence  once  at  least  every  year.  The  rule  is  to  go  there  with 
the  entire  court.  On  entering  the  sick  ward  royalty  at  once 
goes  to  the  nearest  bed  and  humbly  kisses  the  hand  of  the 
poor  patient.  Then  sovereigns  and  courtiers  wait  on  the 
sick,  performing  in  their  behalf  the  most  menial  services, 
and  addressing  the  suiferers  with  as  much  reverence  as  if 
they  beheld  the  God  of  Calvary  or  the  Divine  Babe  of  Beth¬ 
lehem  visibly  present  in  every  sick-bed. 

THE  LEPEOUS  INFANT  CAKED  FOE  BY  ELIZABETH  OF 

HUNGAEY. 

Is  not  this  the  significance  of  a  most  beautiful  legend 
from  the  life  of  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary  ?  Her  mother-in- 
law,  Sophia,  was,  at  the  time  of  the  occurrence  about  to  be 
related,  bitterly  prejudiced  against  the  saintly  wife.  4  4  She 
neither  shared  nor  approved  Elizabeth’ s  charities  and  mer¬ 
ciful  ministrations.  In  her  son,  however,  she  found  no 
sympathy.  Yet  one  account  shows  how  even  his  kind 
heart  was  overtasked.  One  day  a  child  afflicted  with  lep¬ 
rosy  was  brought  to  the  hospital  in  the  W artburg  ;  but  his 
state  was  such  that  even  the  most  courageous  attendants 


*  Hare,  “  Wanderings  in  Spain,”  v.,  pp.  83,  84. 


92  TEE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 

in  tlie  institution  would  neither  touch  him  nor  admit  him. 
Elizabeth,  coming  at  her  usual  hour,  no  sooner  beheld  the 
little  sufferer  lying  helpless  and  forsaken  at  the  gate,  than 
she  took  him  up  in  her  arms,  carried  him  to  the  castle,  and 
placed  him  in  her  own  bed. 

“Sophia,  indignant,  flew  to  the  landgrave.  ‘My  son,’ 
she  burst  forth,  ‘come  with  me  instantly,  and  see  with 
whom  your  wife  shares  your  bed  ;  ’  and  she  led  him  to  his 
chamber,  relating  in  exaggerated  language  the  extraordi¬ 
nary  occurrence  that  seemed  to  crown  all  the  mad  acts  of 
his  wife’s  charity.  The  landgrave,  though  he  said  not  one 
word,  could  scarcely  conceal  his  irritation  and  loathing. 
He  snatched  the  coverlet  from  the  bed,  and  lo  !  instead  of 
the  leper,  there  lay  an  infant ,  surrounded  with  a  halo  of 
light,  and  bearing  the  features  of  the  new-born  babe  of 
Bethlehem !”* 

This  example  is,  however,  more  admirable  than  imitable- 
It  is  a  rare  thing  to  have  to  perform  heroic  acts  of  any 
virtue, — even  that  of  charity.  Where  a  miracle  occurs,  as 
here,  Providence  means  to  inculcate  a  lesson.  The  teach¬ 
ing,  to  the  Catholic  mind,  is  a  plain  one  :  it  is  only  the  repe¬ 
tition,  under  a  different  form,  of  the  Master’ s  doctrine,  that 
he  is  represented  by  the  persons  of  the  poor  and  the  suf¬ 
fering. 

So,  with  this  conviction  firmly  seated  in  the  soul  of  the 
Christian  mistress  of  a  household,  it  will  be  easy  for  her  to 
see  with  what  reverence  and  generosity  she  must  treat  the 
poor.  We  say  “reverence.”  For  if  her  womanly  heart 
has  schooled  itself  to  behold  Christ  present  in  every  one 
of  the  needy  who  come  to  her  door,  she  will  not  have  to 
be  reminded  to  show  to  all,  without  exception,  kindness. 
Kindness  is  something  far  beneath  reverence ;  yet  let  us 
insist  upon  the  absolute  necessity  of  kind  looks  and  kind 
words.  Xo  one  better  than  a  woman  knows  how  far  kind¬ 
ness  goes,  or  how  much  and  how  long  a  kind  word  or  a 
look  of  tender  sympathy  will  be  treasured  up  by  those  on 


*  “Heroic  Women  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church,”  c.  xxxiii.,  pp.  349,  350. 


TREAT  THE  POOR  KINDLY  AND  REVERENTLY. 


93 


whom  they  are  bestowed.  If  you  have  nothing  else  to 
give, — if  your  purse  is  empty,  and  your  bread  has  failed, — 
open  the  spring  of  kindness  in  your  heart  and  let  it  pour 
out  on  the  hearts  of  the  poor  sweet  words  of  compassion, 
often  more  needed  and  more  rarely  bestowed  than  food  on 
the  famishing  or  cold  water  on  the  faint  and  weary. 

Follow  the  rule  of  the  great  St.  Francis,  therefore  :  Be 
invariably  and  unfailingly  hind  to  the  poor.  And  this 
precious  quality  in  the  temper  and  bearing  of  man  or 
woman  can  only  be  secured  by  the  habitual  practice  of 
that  “ reverence’’  just  mentioned.  It  is  more  needful  than 
ever  that  in  every  Catholic  home  mothers  should  cultivate 
that  ancient  respect  for  husband  and  children  which  was 
inspired  by  a  lively  faith,  and  made  every  member  of  the 
Christian  community  view  in  his  fellow-Christians  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  God,  the  person  of  Christ  himself.  This  feeling 
inspired  the  father  of  the  great  .Origen, — a  father  found 
soon  afterward  worthy  to  die  the  death  of  the  martyrs, — 
with  a  reverence  for  his  infant  son  so  deep  and  so  sincere, 
that  he  was  wont  as  he  passed  his  cradle  to  uncover  the 
child’s  breast  and  to  kiss  it,  kneeling, — knowing,  as  he  said, 
that  the  babe  was  the  living  temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

Surely  Catholic  fathers  and  mothers  ought  to  find  an  ex¬ 
quisite  pleasure  in  such  elevating  thoughts  and  sentiments 
as  this  ;  surely  they  should  so  consider  each  other  and  re¬ 
spect  each  other  as  if  they  too  were  chosen  vessels,  vessels 
of  grace,  bearing  about  in  their  bosoms  the  Creator  Spirit ; 
and  most  surely  ought  it  to  be  the  mother’s  chief  delight 
to  reverence  in  every  child  of  hers  a  something  far  more 
holy,  more  precious  than  the  chalice  used  in  the  Holy  Sac¬ 
rifice,  or  the  sacred  vessel  shut  up  in  the  Tabernacle  and  in¬ 
closing  Christ’ s  divinest  gift  to  our  souls. 

Can  we  school  and  accustom  ourselves  so  to  reverence  the 
poor  as  to  sec  in  them  the  Person  of  Him  who  is  represented 
as  evermore  standing  in  the  night,  wet  by  the  dew  or  the  rain¬ 
storm,  at  the  door  of  every  one  of  us,  and  gently  knock¬ 
ing  for  admission  to  the  light  and  warmth  of  our  fireside  ? 

This  said,  it  is  not  our  design  to  say  either  to  the  wealthy 


94 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


or  to  the  needy  housewife  what  measure  she  is  to  follow  in 
relieving  the  wants  of  the  poor. 

Let  our  spirit  be  the  royal  spirit  of  the  ancient  Catho¬ 
lic  charity  of  our  fathers.  To  the  rich  let  this  suffice.  “  A 
modern  author  relates  that  a  merchant  in  Spain  once  said 
to  him  :  A  rich  Spanish  tradesman  would  laugh  at  you  if 
you  talked  to  him  of  keeping  his  carriage  ;  but  ask  him  for 
alms ,  and  he  will  think  nothing  of  giving  you  a  hundred , 
five  hundred ,  or  a  thousand  dollars * 

THE  CHARITABLE  PEASAHT-GIEL. 

In  our  own  days  we  find  in  Catholic  countries  most  illus¬ 
trious  examples  of  unbounded  charity  among  the  poorest 
classes  of  laborers.  At  St.  Etienne -la- Yarenne,  in  the 
south-east  of  France,  lived  a  country  girl  named  Magdalen 
Saulnier.  “  Pious  from  her  cradle,  she  used  to  distribute 
every  day  to  the  neighboring  poor  part  of  the  provision 
that  she  received  for  herself  to  take  into  the  fields  ;  though 
of  a  weak  constitution,  she  used  to  walk  long  distances  to 
visit  other  poor  and  give  them  alms,  which  she  had  begged 
from  the  rich.  During  fifteen  years  she  supported  in  this 
manner  a  poor  blind  man  and  his  idiot  daughter,  daily  vis¬ 
iting  them,  though  they  lived  a  league  and  a  half  from  her 
home.  A  poor  woman  afflicted  with  leprosy  in  the  hamlet 
of  Grandes-Bruyeres  had  no  one,  during  eighteen  months, 
to  come  near  her  but  Magdalen,  in  whose  arms  she  breathed 
her  last.  In  1840,  during  the  inundations  of  the  Rhone, 
she  narrowly  escaped  being  drowned  while  conveying  her 
daily  provision  to  another  poor  woman  in  the  Grange-Ma- 
gon  ;  and,  when  reproached  for  her  imprudence,  she  replied, 

4  Why,  what  would  you  have  me  to  do  ?  I  had  not  seen 
her  the  day  before.’  In  the  depth  of  winter,  in  1835,  she 
had  discovered  a  poor  woman,  named  Mancel,  living  far 
away  in  a  hut,  more  like  a  wild  beast’ s  den  than  a  hu¬ 
man  habitation.  This  poor  creature  was  ill,  and  Magdalen 


*  Compitum,  b.  iii. ,  c.  vii. 


j 


THE  CHARITABLE  PEASANT-GIRL. 


95 


would  not  leave  her  alone.  Toward  the  close  of  a  long 
night,  a  thick  snow  covering  the  ground,  she  lighted  some 
sticks,  which  caused  so  great  a  smoke  that  she  opened  the 
door  to  let  in  fresh  air,  when  a  wolf  stood  ready  to  dispute 
with  Death  its  prey.  It  required  all  her  efforts,  aided  only 
with  a  large  stone,  to  keep  the  door  closed  against  the  fu¬ 
rious  animal,  which  howled  and  struggled  for  entrance  till 
the  dawn.  Some  hours  after,  the  woman  expired.  Then 
Magdalen,  fearing  that  the  wolf  would  return,  took  up 
the  body  on  her  shoulders,  and  carried  it  to  the  house  of 
the  nearest  peasant,  who  received  it  till  the  burial  took 
place.”  * 

What  an  example  is  here — in  this  poor  girl  whose  whole 
life  was  consumed  in  the  incredible  hardships  of  a  field-la¬ 
borer — for  the  wives  and  daughters  of  our  laboring  classes 
in  town  and  country.  There  is  not  a  narrow  street,  crowded 
with  tenement-houses,  in  any  one  of  our  large  cities, — nor  a 
manufacturing  population  in  any  of  our  great  industrial  cen¬ 
ters, — in  which  every  woman  who  reads  these  pages  cannot 
find  some  poor  mother  burdened  with  a  family  who  is  al¬ 
ways  busied  in  doing  good  around  her  to  those  poorer  and 
more  burdened  than  herself  ;  some  factory-girl,  sparely  clad 
and  poorly  fed,  who  is  an  angel  of  good  counsel,  comfort, 
and  all  manner  of  help  to  her  companions.  Travelers  over 
a  sandy  and  treeless  waste  often  chance  upon  green  and 
shady  spots  rising  like  islands  of  the  blessed  in  the  midst  of 
an  ocean  of  death  and  desolation.  When  they  come  to  ex¬ 
amine  what  has  made  these  fairy  spots  so  beautiful,  they 
find  a  spring  of  living  water  gushing  up  from  the  bosom  of 
the  earth,  overflowing  its  native  spot,  causing  the  grass  to 
grow,  and  the  shrub  to  flower,  and  the  tree  to  take  root  and 
thrive,  and  thus  the  green  carpet  spreads  round  about  that 
cool  spring,  and  bird  and  beast  and  man  himself  hasten 
gratefully  to  enjoy  the  shade,  the  refreshing  waters,  the 
loveliness  and  repose  of  the  spot.  Examine  well,  in  these 
moral  wastes  so  frequent  and  so  hideous  amid  our  civiliza- 


*  Ibidem ,  pp.  265,  266. 


96 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


tion  and  onr  Christianity,  what  is  the  source  of  the  sweet 
and  sanctifying  influences  you  discover  in  certain  neighbor¬ 
hoods  :  you  will  be  sure  to  trace  it  to  some  womanly  heart, 
in  the  poorest  of  hovels  frequently,  and  not  seldom  in  the 
coldest  and  most  naked  of  garrets. 

FRENCH-CANAHIAN  WOMEN  AND  THE  IRISH  ORPHANS 

of  1847. 

But  let  us  point  out,  nearer  home,  some  heroic  examples, 
which  we  may  hold  up  as  a  mirror  to  American  woman¬ 
hood. 

And  first  must  be  recorded  here,  by  one  who  was  an  eye- 
witness  of  what  he  relates,  and  before  the  generation  wdiich 
beheld  it  has  passed  away,  one  of  the  sublimest  instances 
of  Christian  charity  known  to  ancient  or  modern  times. 
jSTew  York  and  Quebec  have  not  yet  forgotten  the  Irish 
famine  of  1846-47  and  its  terrible  consequences.  But  ’tis 
with  the  latter  city  in  particular  that  this  narrative  has  to 
deal.  Fearful  as  had  been  all  through  the  fall  and  winter 
of  1846  the  tidings  borne  to  America  about  the  privations 
endured  by  a  whole  famishing  people,  and  the  mortality 
caused  by  fever  and  other  attendant  diseases,  but  little  ap¬ 
prehension  was  felt  in  Canada  when  navigation  opened  with 
the  early  spring.  Consequently  nothing  like  adequate  pre¬ 
paration  was  made  by  the  local  authorities  either  at  the 
quarantine  station  below  Quebec,  or  at  any  of  the  usual 
landing-places  along  the  St.  Lawrence. 

The  result  of  this  want  of  forethought  was  terrible  both  for 
the  thousands  of  wretched  immigrants  cast  all  of  a  sudden 
on  our  shores,  and  for  the  populations  among  whom  the  poor 
fevered  victims  carried,  whithersoever  they  went,  the  seeds 
of  pestilence.  The  quarantine  station  on  Grosse  Isle,  below 
Quebec,  became  a  hot-bed  of  the  most  virulent  typhus  fever, 
and  almost  all  the  priests  who  were  called  in  turn  to  minis¬ 
ter  to  the  spiritual  wants  of  the  crowded  sick  on  ship  and 
shore,  caught  the  disease,  many  of  them  dying,  and  the 
others  carrying  disease,  death,  and  dismay  back  with  them 


MEMORABLE  CHARITY  OF  FRENCH-CANADIANS.  97 

to  their  parishes.  In  the  city  of  Quebec  itself  but  compar¬ 
atively  few  ravages  were  committed  by  this  dreaded  ‘  ‘  ship- 
fever:”  the  steamers  which  conveyed  the  healthier  immi¬ 
grants  to  Montreal  and  the  upper  St.  Lawrence  not  being 
permitted  to  land.  In  Montreal,  however,  and  in  Kingston 
and  Toronto  their  arrival  and  passage  wrere  marked  by  a 
fearful  mortality.  In  the  first-named  city  Bishop  Bourget, 
his  coadjutor,  Bishop  Prince,  his  vicar-general,  and  some 
thirty  priests  were  stricken  down  by  the  plague.  The  semi¬ 
nary  of  St.  Sulpice  alone  lost  eight  of  its  members.  Bishop 
Power  of  Toronto  fell  a  victim  to  it,  and  its  ravages  were 
such,  during  the  early  summer,  that  they  far  outstripped 
those  of  the  cholera. 

Of  course  thousands  upon  thousands  of  orphans  were  left 
behind,  and  that,  too,  at  a  time  when  to  give  them  a  refuge 
in  any  home  in  town  and  country,  appeared  to  be  bringing 
certain  death  into  the  family.  Yet, — and  this  is  what  must 
redound  to  the  eternal  honor  of  the  French  Canadian  popu¬ 
lation  of  the  present  province  of  Quebec, — not  only  was 
there  no  hesitation  manifested  in  adopting  these  little  cast¬ 
aways,  but  at  the  voice  of  their  bishops  and  priests  the 
people  of  the  country  parishes  vied  with  each  other  in 
their  zeal  to  share  their  homes  with  them. 

The  author  remembers  returning  from  quarantine,  in  the 
second  week  of  July,  with  the  Bev.  John  Harper,  rector 
of  St.  Gregoire,  opposite  Three  Pi  vers.  They  had  spent 
a  fortnight  among  the  fever-sheds,  and  had,  at  the  urgent 
request  of  their  parishioners,  brought  home  with  them  a 
large  number  of  orphans.  The  parishioners  of  St.  Gregoire 
(the  descendants  of  the  noble  Acadians  eulogized  by  the 
author  of  ‘ 4  Evangeline 5  ’ )  had  chartered  a  little  steamer  to 
convey  us  and  our  orphans  across  the  river.  We  had  been 
delayed  perforce  on  our  way  upward,  and  on  our  arrival 
about  midnight  at  Three  Elvers,  we  found  a  crowd  of  eager 
and  excited  women,  mothers  of  families  all  of  them,  wait¬ 
ing  and  watching  for  us.  Mr.  Harper  was  among  his  parish¬ 
ioners,  and  on  the  spot  these  noble  mothers  were  allowed 
to  satisfy  the  yearning  of  their  Christian  hearts,  and  to  take 
7 


98 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


each  her  little  orphan  to  her  embrace.  It  was  a  spectacle 
worthy  of  the  admiration  of  angels,  which  was  beheld  on 
that  wharf  at  that  sultry  midnight  in  July,  these  farmers’ 
wives,  weeping  every  one  of  them  with  that  holy  emotion 
which  sweetest  charity  creates,  pressing  around  their  pastor 
and  choosing,  when  they  could,  in  the  uncertain  light,  the 
child  that  pleased  them  best,  or  accepting  joyously  and 
folding  in  a  motherly  embrace  the  little  orphan  allotted  to 
them.  The  ladies  of  Three  Rivers  were  also  there,  jealous 
of  the  happiness  of  their  sisters  and  neighbors,  and  employ¬ 
ing  in  the  darkness  some  pious  stratagem  to  decoy  to  their 
homes  some  of  the  weary,  wasted,  or  fevered  little  crea¬ 
tures. 

The  author  was  a  hundred  miles  distant  from  his  own 
parish  of  Sherbrooke,  and  had  only  dared  to  select  a  few 
orphans  to  take  with  him  all  the  way.  So,  after  an  hour 
of  confusion  and  excitement  we  were  all  content  to  rest  till 
the  approaching  daylight.  When  the  dawn  came,  and  we 
left  our  resting-places  for  the  ferry,  all  Three  Rivers  and  its 
neighborhood  were  abroad  to  see  the  priests,  their  orphans, 
and  the  happy  mothers  to  whom  God  had  given  the  prize 
of  an  orphan,  wending  their  way  in  a  procession  to  the 
steamer  and  the  ferry-boat.  The  heat  of  the  preceding 
days,  and  the  sultry  night  with  its  excitement,  had  told 
on  more  than  one  of  the  bewildered  little  strangers  :  there 
were  several  cases  of  declared  fever.  But  no  one  seemed  to 
mind.  The  charity  of  Jesus  Christ  was  abroad,  like  a  river 
overflowing  its  banks.  Two  children  who  had  fallen  to  the 
author’ s  charge  were  especially  ill ;  one,  a  little  boy,  clung  to 
his  cassock  as  we  set  out  from  the  hotel ;  the  other,  a  little 
girl  of  four,  he  had  to  carry  in  his  arms,  as  she  was  too  sick 
to  walk. 

The  scene  has  remained  indelibly  impressed  upon  heart 
and  memory.  We  were  wending  our  way  through  the 
crowd  of  weeping  or  pitying  spectators,  when  the  wife  of 
a  distinguished  lawyer  of  Three  Rivers,  childless  herself,  as 
we  were  told,  approached  the  author  to  caress  the  little 
motherless  one  who  clung  to  him  in  apparent  insensibility. 


A  HEROIC  WOMAN. 


99 


As  she  kissed  the  child  again  and  again,  addressing  it  in 
the  sweetest  tones  of  womanly  tenderness,  the  little  sufferer 
looked  into  those  appealing,  tearful  eyes,  and  stretched  out 
her  arms  to  that  hungry  heart  which  would  not  be  refused. 
They  were  only  separated  by  death  thereafter. 

But  when  we  reached  the  other  shore  we  found  the  Bev. 
J.  C.  Marquis,  with  the  entire  population  of  St.  Gregoire, 
and  every  available  mode  of  conveyance  waiting  for  ns ;  and 
so  we  proceeded  some  two  or  three  miles  to  the  beautiful 
parish  church,  where  priests  and  people  knelt  in  devout 
thanksgiving, — the  priests  grateful  for  their  preservation 
from  the  plague,  the  people  thanking  God  for  the  precious 
boon  charity  had  bestowed  on  them.  They  did  not  rest 
contented  with  this,  however :  hundreds  of  other  orphans 
were  sought  after  subsequently  and  added  to  the  happiness, 
and — let  us  hope — the  prosperity  of  this  excellent  people. 
Not  one  of  these  stranger-children  but  became  in  every 
sense  the  child  of  the  home  into  which  it  was  received. 

All  through  the  remaining  months  of  summer,  the  autumn, 
and  the  early  winter,  this  generous  Same  of  charity  spread 
and  burned  among  the  French  Canadian  parishes  along  both 
shores  of  the  St.  Lawrence  ;  and,  strange  to  say,  the  good 
souls  who  thus  vied  with  each  other  in  opening  their  homes 
and  hearts  to  the  orphans  of  Ireland’s  exiles,  were  wont  to 
say  that  while  the  plague  spared  the  families  into  which 
the  strangers  were  admitted,  it  swept  away  pitilessly  such 
as  gave  them  a  passing  or  a  mercenary  refuge.  Ah,  gener¬ 
ous  people  of  New  France,  may  the  Saints  of  Ireland  obtain 
for  you  length  of  days,  with  the  richest  blessings  of  true 
freedom,  a  constant  increase  in  the  noblest  gifts  of  soul,  and 
all  the  rewards  of  true  piety  ! 

THE  WIFE  OF  A  SHIP-CARPENTER  A  MINISTERING  ANGEL  OF 

MERCY. 

i 

One  crowning  instance  must  be  selected,  ere  we  close  this 
chapter,  to  demonstrate  what  womanly  hearts  can  and  will 
effect  for  the  suffering  and  the  needy.  It  is  November  in 


100 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Quebec,  in  that  same  memorable  year  1847,  and  November 
had  set  in  with  unusual  severity.  The  country  parishes 
all  round  had  each  received  its  colony  of  Irish  orphans  or 
young  girls,  who  were  adopted  by  the  excellent  farmers, 
Still  the  temporary  asylums  in  Quebec  attached  to  St. 
Patrick’ s  church  remained  overcrowded  ;  no  provision  had 
been  made  for  their  sustenance  during  the  long  winter  which 
was  setting  in  so  fiercely  ;  and  local  charity,  it  was  feared, 
had  been  exhausted  by  the  extraordinary  drain  of  the  pre¬ 
ceding  six  months. 

At  a  meeting  of  ladies  it  was  resolved  that  the  most  zeal¬ 
ous  would  go  by  sub-committees  of  twos  and  threes  into  all 
the  neighboring  parishes,  and  knock  at  every  door  to  exhort 
every  family  to  adopt  one  of  the  many  hundreds  of  home¬ 
less  waifs  left  behind  by  the  retiring  tide  of  disease  and 
wretchedness.  Women’s  tongues  are  eloquent  when  fired 
by  such  a  cause  ;  they  were  welcomed  everywhere,  and  a 
day  was  fixed  when  the  orphans  should  be  brought  to  St. 
Patrick’s  church,  and  all  who  wished  to  add  one  more 
stranger  to  their  family  circle  were  to  go  there  and  make 
their  choice. 

So,  on  the  day  appointed,  the  ferries  from  Point  Levi  and 
the  Island  of  Orleans  were  early  crowded  with  farmers’ 
wives  and  daughters,  while  along  the  roads  from  St.  Foye 
and  Beauport,  Cliarlebourg  and  Lorette,  the  vehicles  of  the 
country  people  streamed  into  the  city  as  to  some  great 
public  festival. 

It  was  near  noon,  and  in  the  house  of  a  French  Canadian 
ship-carpenter,  out  near  the  banks  of  the  St.  Charles  River, 
at  the  extremity  of  the  St.  Rocli  suburb,  the  cheerful, 
active  mother  of  six  children  was  just  concluding  her  morn¬ 
ing’s  labor,  sending  off  her  oldest  girl  with  the  father’s  din¬ 
ner  to  the  ship-yard,  leaving  her  infant  nursling  with  a 
kind  neighbor,  and  then  hurrying  away, — a  distance  of  full 
two  miles,  to  Patrick’s  church.  She  had  been  delayed  in 
spite  of  her  utmost  exertions,  and  her  only  feeling,  as  she 
almost  ran  along  the  road,  was  one  of  fear  lest  she  should 
be  too  late  at  the  church  and  miss  the  prize  which  she  had 


THE  LITTLE  DEFORMED  FINDS  A  MOTHER.  101 

|  promised  her  husband  to  bring  home  to  himself  and  their 
dear  ones. 

The  silent  empty  streets  through  which  she  passed  on 
nearing  the  church  made  her  heart  sink  within  her ;  and  as 
she  entered  St.  Patrick’s  there  was  no  one  there  but  a  few 
good  old  souls  telling  their  beads  before  the  altar,  and  some 
soldiers  of  the  garrison  performing  “  the  Way  of  the  Cross.” 
The  tears  filled  her  eyes  as  she  knelt  a  moment  in  adora¬ 
tion  ;  and  then  she  hastened  to. explore  the  two  large  sacris¬ 
ties  behind  the  church.  They  were  empty  !  As  she  passed 
through  the  lower  one,  what  she  deemed  a  stifled  sob  struck 
her  ear ;  but  the  distant  corner  whence  it  seemed  to  issue 
was  very  dark,  and  her  eyes  were  still  half-blinded  by  the 
brilliant  sun  outside  and  the  glare  of  the  snow.  So,  in  her  % 
excitement,  she  heeded  not  the  sound,  but  crossed  the  court¬ 
yard  to  the  rectory  and  knocked  timidly  at  the  door.  The 
servant,  on  opening,  saw  this  good  woman  in  tears,  and 
scarcely  able  to  articulate  one  word.  At  length  she  gasped 
out,  ‘  ‘  The  orphans  ?  ” — “  The  orphans,  ma’  am  ?  ’  ’  replied 
the  other;  u  there  are  none  here!” — “  Where  are  they  \  ” 
— “  All  gone — all  taken  away  by  the  ladies.” — “Have  you 
kept  none  that  you  might  let  me  have  \  ” — “No,  indeed,” 

!  was  the  answer  ;  and  with  this  the  poor  woman  turned 
away  with  a  heavy  heart.  As  she  re-entered  the  lower 
sacristy  on  her  way  to  the  church,  her  ear  was  again  struck 
with  the  sound  of  sobbing,  and  coming,  this  time,  more 
audibly  from  the  distant  dark  corner.  She  was  there  in  a 
moment ;  and  bending,  or  rather  kneeling  down,  she  dis¬ 
tinguished  a  female  child,  with  its  head  between  its  hands, 
sobbing  and  moaning  piteously. 

It  was  a  little  girl,  some  five  years  old,  who  on  the  voyage 
out  had  lost  father  and  mother,  brothers,  sisters — all !  The 
little  thing,  naturally  a  very  beautiful  child,  had  had  in 
succession  fever,  dysentery,  and  small-pox ;  and  beneath 
this  complication  she  had  almost  sunk.  She  had  partially 
lost  the  use  of  her  lower  limbs,  and  had  been  frightfully 
disfigured.  In  the  church,  whither  she  had  been  brought 
early  in  the  morning  with  the  other  orphans,  the  charitable 


102 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD 


women  had  invariably  passed  her  by,  choosing,  as  was 
natural,  the  most  comely  children  for  their  adopted  ones, — 
and  the  sensitive  slighted  little  thing  sobbed  so  piteoiisly 
that  she  was  taken  to  the  sacristy  in  order  not  to  disturb 
the  proceedings  in  the  church.  There  she  had  sat  in  the 
corner,  sobbing  herself  to  sleep,  and  had  been  forgotten 
when  the  crowd  left  the  church.  So,  as  the  opening  of  the 
sacristy  door,  a  moment  ago,  had  roused  the  forlorn  one 
from  her  somnolency,  she  had  looked  up  at  the  stranger 
coming  in  with  a  revival  of  hope,  and  a  sob  escaped  her  as 
the  latter  passed  out  by  the  opposite  door.  Once  more 
hiding  her  face  in  her  hands,  she  wept  and  sobbed  with 
increased  bitterness,  as  if  the  little  wounded  heart  within 
would  burst  her  chest. 

And  thus  the  good  carpenter’s  wife  found  her,  as  she 
knelt  in  the  gloom  by  her  side.  4  4  What  is  the  matter,  dear 
child?”  she  said,  with  infinite  tenderness  in  her  tone. 

4 4 Who  has  left  you  here? — Speak  to  me,  my  dear!”  she 
went  on,  as  she  removed  the  hands  from  her  face.  The 
child  looked  up  through  her  scalding  tears  at  the  sweet 
sound  of  that  motherly  voice,  and  all  wms  plain  to  the 
speaker.  The  face  thus  revealed  was  so  disfigured  that  the 
woman  drew  back  involuntarily.  But  recovering  herself 
instantly,  and, — as  she  expressed  it, — indignant  at  her  own 
cowardice,  she  extended  both  arms  lovingly  to  the  weeper : 

4 4  Kiss  me,  darling,”  she  said,  as  her  own  tears  flowed 
fast,  44  kiss  me,  come  to  my  heart;  don’t  be  afraid,  I  am 
your  mother  now.”  And  she  folded  her  in  her  embrace, 
covering  her  face  and  head  with  tears  and  kisses.  The 
ship-carpenter's  family  possessed  a  blessed  treasure  that 
night. 

No,  this  is  not  extraordinary  charity :  great  hearts,  like 
that  of  that  noble  woman,  abound  everywhere  among  our 
laboring  people.  O  women,  who  read  these  lines,  remem¬ 
ber,  that  your  charity,  your  generosity  will  find  in  your 
every-day  ordinary  life  rich  opportunities  for  their  exercise. 
Never  neglect  any  occasion  God  sends  you  of  doing  the 
good  you  can.  Great  charity,  like  every  other  great  virtue, 


DO  THE  GOOD  YOU  MAT  MOST  HEARTILY. 


103 


does  not  consist  in  doing  extraordinary  things,  or  waitin 
for  extraordinary  circumstances;  it  depends  on  our  doin 
with  all  our  heart  the  good  we  have  the  chance  of  doing 
at  every  moment  within  our  own  homes  and  outside  of 
them. 

“  I  have  known  a  word  hang  starlike 
O’er  a  dreary  waste  of  years. 

And  it  only  shone  the  brighter 
Looked  at  through  a  mist  of  tears  ; 

While  a  weary  wanderer  gathered 
Hope  and  heart  on  Life’s  dark  way. 

By  its  faithful  promise,  shining 
Clearer  day  by  day. 

I  have  known  a  word  more  gentle 
Than  the  breath  of  summer  air  ; 

In  a,  listening  heart  it  nestled, 

And  it  lived  forever  there. 

Not  the  beating  of  its  prison 
Stirred  it  ever  night  or  day  ; 

Only  with  the  heart’s  last  throbbing 
Could  it  fade  away.”  * 


*  Adelaide  Anne  Procter. 


bJD  biD 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THE  wife’s  CROWNING  DUTY— FIDELITY. 

Ut  nos  junxit  amor ,  nostro  sic  parta  labore 
Unanimes  animos  operit  una  domus. 

As  us  love  joined,  so  by  our  toil  acquired, 

One-minded  souls  one  mansion  covereth. 

— Ancient  inscription  on  a  French  house. 

Do  you  know  where  you  are  ?  Do  you  know  that  this  is  the  house  of  a  man 
rich  in  virtue  V  ...  Do  you  know  that  these  marbles,  these  stones,  these 
paternal  ceilings,  represent  the  ancient  honor  and  the  venerated  virtue  of  the 
family  ?  The  house  of  my  father  is  the  center  of  loyalty,  and  the  sanctuary  of 
honor. — Alarion. 


The  home  is  the  nursery  of  the  nation,  and  the  deep  and 
sacred  love  that  binds  into  one  existence  the  hearts  and 
lives  of  husband  and  wife,  is  the  soul  of  the  home  life. 
Every  thing  which  tends  to  lessen,  to  divide,  to  sully  that 
sacred  union  of  hearts,  strikes  at  the  very  life  of  the  family 
and  aims  at  upsetting  the  foundations  of  the  moral  world. 

The  sacred  virtue,  the  immaculate  honor  of  every  family, 
is  inseparable  from  the  purity  and  perpetuity  of  the  love 
pledged  to  each  other  by  both  parents  ;  more  especially, 
in  universal  estimation,  is  the  family  honor  dependent  on 
the  inviolable  fidelity  of  the  mother  toward  him  to  whom 
she  gave  her  early  love. 

Hence  the  deep  significance  of  the  prayer  of  the  church 
in  the  solemn  ceremony  of  marriage.  She  who  had  proposed 
to  the  imitation  of  all  waves  the  undivided  and  unalterable 
love  which  she  ever  bears  to  Christ,  her  Spouse,  —who  gives 

104 


THE  RING  SYMBOLIC  OF  ETERNAL  FIDELITY.  105 


them  in  her  inviolable  and  eternal  fidelity  to  him,  to  his 
honor  and  interests,  the  model  of  the  true  woman’ s  unwaver¬ 
ing,  sustained,  and  devoted  fidelity  to  her  husband, — makes 
of  this  notion  the  central  point  in  her  magnificent  marriage 
ritual. 

Throughout  all  ages  known  to  history,  the  most  refined 
peoples  have  looked  upon  the  ring  as  the  symbol  of  eternity 
— as  the  proper  emblem,  therefore,  of  the  union  of  souls  un¬ 
derlying  the  matrimonial  contract. 

THE  RING  SYMBOLIC  OF  ETERNAL  FIDELITY.  • 

% 

When  the  Church  has  witnessed  and  sanctioned  by  her 
blessing  the  mutual  and  solemn  pledge  given  by  bride 
and  bridegroom,  she  proceeds  to  bless  a  ring,  which  is  given 
to  the  bride  as  a  symbol  and  seal  of  the  union  into  which 
she  has  entered,  and  of  the  enduring  fidelity  with  which 
she  is  to  feed  the  sacred  fire  of  mutual  affection  and  to 
watch  over  the  honor  of  her  hearth-stone. 

“Bless,  0  Lord,  this  ring,”  such  is  the  prayer,  “which 
we  bless  in  thy  name,  in  order  that  she  who  wears  it,  by 
preserving  unbroken  fidelity  to  her  husband,  may  continue 
in  peace  and  the  accomplishment  of  thy  will,  and  also  ever 
live  in  mutual  charity.” 

Where  the  beautiful  ceremonial  is  carried  out  in  its  in¬ 
tended  fullness,  the  nuptial  benediction  is  followed  by  the 
offering  of  the  adorable  sacrifice.  Christ  comes  down  on 
the  altar,  who  so  loved  the  Church,  his  Bride,  that  he  “de¬ 
livered  himself  up  for  it,  that  he  might  sanctify  it,  cleansing 
it  by  the  laver  of  water  in  the  word  of  life,  that  he  might 
present  it  to  himself  a  glorious  Church,  not  having  spot,  or 
wrinkle,  or  any  such  thing,  but  that  it  should  be  holy  and 
without  blemish.” 

There,  at  that  altar  and  in  that  presence,  kneel  the  two 
for  whom  the  Saviour  God  comes  down,  his  hands  filled 
with  blessing  for  these  his  children  beginning  life  together, 
and  his  heart  overflowing  with  untold  treasures  of  grace, — * 
so  needful  to  them  on  their  pathway  of  pain  and  labor. 


106  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

But  there  is  more  than  this  ;  the  Church  breaks  in  on  the 
most  solemn  portion  of  the  liturgy, — that  between  the  con¬ 
secration  and  communion,— to  pronounce  a  further  blessing 
on  the  bride.  Turning  toward  the  newly -married,  the  priest, 
as  if  his  hands  were  laden  with  the  blessings  brought  from 
on  high,  and  his  lips  touched  with  the  hallowed  fire  to 
prophesy  good  things  to  the  suppliants  prostrate  there,  thus 
prays : 

“  O  God,  who  by  thy  might  didst  create  all  things  out  of 
nothingness ;  who,  having  ordered  the  first  stages  of  this 
universe,  and  made  man  to  the  image  of  God,  didst  make 
man’s  substance  the  principle  of  woman’s  being,  that  she 
should  thus  be  his  inseparable  companion,  teaching  us 
thereby  that  a  union  originating  in  such  unity  may  never 
be  broken  without  crime ;  O  God,  who  didst  hallow  this 
conjugal  union  by  so  surpassing  a  grace  as  to  make  the 
primitive  nuptial  alliance  the  prophetic  figure  of  the  mys¬ 
terious  union  of  Christ  with  the  Church ;  God,  by  whom 
woman  is  thus  united  to  man,  and  the  primordial  society  thus 
formed  is  endowed  with  a  blessing  which  alone  survived  the 
punishment  of  original  sin  and  the  judgment  executed 
through  the  deluge ;  look  down  propitiously  on  this  thy 
handmaiden,  who,  about  to  begin  her  companionship  with 
her  husband,  beseeches  Thee  to  grant  her  Thy  protection  : 
in  her  may  the  yoke  of  love  and  peace  ever  abide  ;  faithful 
and  chaste,  may  she  wed  in  Christ,  and  be  evermore  the 
imitator  of  holy  women  :  may  she  prove  lovely  to  her  hus¬ 
band,  like  Rachel ;  wise,  like  Rebecca  ;  long-lived  and  faith¬ 
ful,  like  Sara ;  may  the  fell  Author  of  (Eve’s)  prevarication 
find  no  trace  in  her  of  the  actions  which  he  counsels  ;  may 
she  be  immovably  attached  to  thy  faith  and  law :  the 
spouse  of  one  man,  may  no  other  love  ever  touch  her ;  may 
she  school  and  shield  her  own  weakness  by  home-discipline  : 
may  she  be  modest  and  dignified,  chaste  and  venerable,  en¬ 
lightened  by  wisdom  from  on  high  ;  .  .  .  may  she  win 

approval  by  her  stainless  life,  and  thus  attain  to  the  rest  of 
the  blessed  and  the  heavenly  kingdom.”  * 


*  The  Roman  Missal  in  the  “  Nuptial  Mass.” 


THE  HONOR  OF  FAMILIES  GUARDED. 


107 


THE  WIFE’S  HONOR  THE  FOUNT  OF  ALL  HONOR. 

Pagans,  in  ancient  times,  were  wont  to  attribute  tlie  origin 
of  each  mighty  river  to  a  peculiar  deity  ;  so  they  built  a 
temple  at  its  head-waters,  and  there  offered  frequent  sacri¬ 
fice  in  order  that  the  stream  throughout  its  course  to  the 
ocean  might  be  pure  and  healthful,  and  fraught  with  all 
manner  of  blessings  to  the  lands  it  watered.' 

This,  like  many  other  customs,  was  only  the  perversion 
of  a  deep  religious  truth.  God  has  committed  this  earth 
and  all  therein  that  is  most  beneficial  to  man  to  the  custody 
of  those  blessed  spirits,  who,  destined  to  be  in  eternity  the 
fellow-citizens  of  men  made  perfect  in  glory,  take  delight 
in  watching  over  their  welfare  and  being  their  companions 
in  this  life  of  trial. 

But  if  a  perverse  sentiment  induced  the  heathen  of  old 
to  consider  as  a  something  holy  and  divine  the  well-spring 
of  mighty  rivers,  what  must  not  a  Religion  which  comes 
from  the  true  God  think  of  the  home  which  he  destines  to 
be  the  source  of  a  race  of  men  and  women  designed  to  be 
his  own  adopted  children  ?  What  solemnity  must  the 
Church  not  employ  to  hallow  that  union,  on  the  permanence 
and  sacredness  of  which  depend  the  honor,  the  unspotted 
name,  the  greatness  and  happiness  of  a  family  throughout 
all  succeeding  generations  S 

Hence  the  inconceivable  care  with  which  the  Church  has, 
ever  since  the  days  of  Christ, — the  second  and  truest  Pa¬ 
rent  of  mankind, — watched  over  the  unity  and  sacredness 
of  that  bond  which  makes  of  father  and  mother  the  one, 
sole,  loving  and  beloved  well-spring  of  the  family  exist¬ 
ence,  pride,  and  honor. 

HOW  THE  CHURCH  HAS  GUARDED  THE  HONOR  OF  FAMILIES. 

During  nineteen  centuries,  as  the  history  of  Christendom 
attests,  the  Church  has  endured,  in  the  East  as  well  as  in 
the  West,  many  bitter  persecutions  at  the  hand  of  empe- 


108 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


rors,  kings,  and  other  sovereign  princes,  because  she  would 
not  permit  them  to  put  away  their  lawful  wives,  become 
distasteful  to  them,  or  sanction  their  unhallowed  union 
with  others,  while  the  former  were  still  living.  Thus  did 
she,  who  is  here  below  the  mother  of  the  true  life  and  of 
beautiful  and  chaste  love,  protect  the  weakness  of  the 
woman  and  wife  against  the  unholy  passions  of  all-power¬ 
ful  husbands  ;  surely,  being  such  as  she  is,  she  has  a  right, 
as  she  has  a  charge,  to  save  woman  sometimes  from  the 
tyranny  of  her  own  headlong  inclinations. 

At  no  period  in  Christian  history,  however,  has  there 
existed  such  a  blind  and  general  conspiracy  of  governments 
and  peoples  to  ruin  the  sacred  institution  of  matrimony  as 
in  the  present  age.  So  long  as  Christendom  was  governed 
in  things  spiritual  by  the  judicial  decisions  of  the  Roman 
Pontiff,  no  State  dared  pass  a  law  contrary  to  the  unity  and 
indissolubility  of  the  marriage  tie  ;  no  individual,  whether 
sovereign  or  subject,  prince  or  peasant,  could  violate  with 
impunity  the  law  which  guarded  the  honor  of  every  family. 
The  sword  of  excommunication  was  as  sure  to  reach  the 
transgressor, — whether  he  sat  on  the  throne,  or  lived  in  a 
palace,  or  dwelt  in  a  shepherd’s  cot, — as  when  Paul  first 
drew  it  against  the  incestuous  Corinthian  in  the  first  days 
of  Christianity. 

MODERN  LEGISLATION  DESTRUCTIVE  OF  THE  FAMILY  HONOR. 

Now  States,  legislatures,  sovereigns,  and  governments, 
abetted  or  unresisted  by  their  respective  peoples,  have  de- 
christianized  and  unhallowed  the  marriage  contract  and  all 
its  solemnities,  and  made  it  a  civil  act,  deriving  its  value, 
sanction,  and  binding  power  from  the  civil  authority.  Non- 
Catholic  sects  and  ministers  have  neither  the  power,  nor, 
seemingly,  the  will  to  assert  the  sacredness  of  Christ’s  insti¬ 
tution.  Luther, — as  he  set  out  on  his  downward  path  as  a 
reformer, — declared  against  the  unity  of  the  marriage  tie, 
and  further  desecrated  the  solemn  rite  of  matrimony  by 
taking  to  wife  a  nun,  both  being  previously  bound  by  sol- 


IN  WHAT  THE  WIFE'S  FIDELITY  CONSISTS. 


109 


emn  vow  never  to  marry,  and  thereby  incapacitated  from 
contracting  valid  nuptials.  The  Mormons  of  Utah  have 
only  pushed  to  its  legitimate  limits  the  liberty  of  Biblical 
interpretation  invoked  by  Luther  and  the  Reformation ; 
and  European  governments  and  legislatures,  like  the  sev¬ 
eral  States  of  the  American  Union,  are  only  consistent  with 
the  universal  teaching  of  Protestantism, — denying  to  mar¬ 
riage  among  Christians  any  sacramental  or  supernatural 
character. 

Christian  families  still  find  in  the  teaching  of  the  Catholic 
Church  and  the  far-reaching  authority  of  her  Pontiffs,  the 
only  divine  safeguard  on  earth  against  the  invasion  of  their 
homes  and  their  honor  by  Mormonism  or  State  secularism. 

It  is  that  same  teaching,  that  same  fatherly  voice  which, 
while  protecting  you,  O  wives  and  mothers,  against  the 
passions  that  would  sanction  the  unfaithfulness  of  your 
husbands,  ever  bids  and  exhorts  you  to  unwearied  devo¬ 
tion  and  fidelity  above  reproach  or  suspicion. 

IX  WHAT  THE  WIFE’S  FIDELITY  CONSISTS. 

In  the  two  preceding  chapters  we  have  insisted  much  on 
the  qualities  which  enable  a  wife  to  be,  in  the  fullest  sense, 
the  most  delightful  companion,  the  most  efficient  helpmate, 
the  most  trusted  friend  and  confidante  of  her  husband.  All 
this  she  cannot  be,  without  being  at  the  same  time  most 
truly  devoted  to  him  in  thought  and  affection, — so  that  he 
alone,  after  God,  fills  her  mind  and  her  heart. 

We  have  touching  examples  of  this  inviolable  fidelity, — 
springing,  in  the  first  instance,  from  that  single-hearted  and 
absorbing  love  of  a  good  husband  which  leaves  no  thought 
of  any  other  love  being  possible  ;  and,  in  the  second,  from  a 
wife’s  own  high  principle  and  fear  of  God,  which  keeps  her 
true  to  the  love  she  pledged,  even  when  its  object  has  be^ 
come  most  unworthy,  or,  possibly,  most  hateful. 

FIDELITY  ILLUSTRATED. 

In  the  patriarchal  ages  before  Abraham, — in  the  age  of 
Noe  and  those  preceding  the  flood, — there  was  no  question 


110 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


among  the  families  of  the  blessed  line  of  Seth  of  admitting 
a  second  wife  into  the  family.  That  was  characteristic  of 
the  evil  brood  of  Cain, — his  son,  Lamech,  being  mentioned 
as  the  first  who  had  departed  from  the  unity  of  the  institu¬ 
tion  of  marriage  as  it  came  from  the  hands  of  the  Creator. 
But  Seth  himself,  and  every  one  of  the  blessed  descendants 
who  kept  alive  on  earth  the  primitive  faith  in  Jehovah  and 
the  belief  in  the  promised  Redeemer,  also  maintained  in 
their  households  the  faith  they  had  pledged  to  the  wife  of 
their  youth.  Though  these  men  lived  five  hundred,  six 
hundred,  or  even  nine  hundred  years  and  more,  their  hearts 
were  content  with  the  love,  and  their  lives  filled  with  the 
fidelity,  of  that  one  woman:  it  was  a  sacred  fire  in. these 
august  patriarchal  homes,  burning  undimmed  century  after 
century  on. the  hearth-stone, — an  example,  even  at  this  dis¬ 
tance  of  time,  deserving  of  the  wonder  and  veneration  of 
their  degenerate  descendants. 

Rebecca’s  fidelity  prefigures  that  of  the  church. 

The  violation  of  that  unity  by  Abraham,  even  at  the  so¬ 
licitation  of  his  faithful  Sara,  was  a  manifest  imperfection 
in  him,  who  should  have  known  better,  and  a  want  of  faith 
and  error  of  judgment  in  her,  who  had  been  brought  up 
among  the  licentiousness  of  the  Mesopotamian  idolatry. 
But  Abraham’s  son  and  successor,  Isaac,  and  his  bride, 
Rebecca,  departed  not  from  the  great  primitive  law.  For 
Isaac,  who  bore  the  wood  of  his  sacrifice  up  the  mountain¬ 
side  was  the  figure  of  Christ ;  just  like  Isaac’s  early  and  only 
love,  Rebecca,  brought  to  him  so  wondrously  from  afar, — 
was  the  type  of  the  Church. 

It  is  the  love  of  both  Rebecca  and  the  Church  that  forms 
a  model  and  a  rule  for  every  Christian  wife. 

juditii’s  example. 

We  have  nearer  to  us  in  the  Old  Testament  history  other 
touching  examples  of  fidelity  in  wives  to  the  husband  of 


ANNA  THE  PROPHETESS. 


Ill 


their  youth.  Judith  the  Deliverer,  “the  Joy  of  Israel,” 
the  glory  and  honor  of  her  people,  was  widowed  young, 
and,  though  surpassingly  beautiful,  and  most  wealthy,  she 
remained  true  to  the  memory  of  her  husband,  inviolably 
faithful  to  the  loye  she  had  plighted  to  him.  The  sudden 
inspiration  which  came  to  her  to  offer  herself  to  the  admir¬ 
ing  eyes  of  the  Assyrian  general,  was  no  deviation  from  the 
law  of  fidelity  which  she  had  so  scupulously  followed  till 
then.  She  trusted  to  God's  angel  to  keep  her  honor  safe  in 
the  Assyrian  camp,  and,  as  she  afterward  declared,  he  had 
watched  over  her  coming  and  going  till  she  had  struck  the 
blow  which  freed  her  country.  The  victory  once  won,  and 
the  national  thanksgiving  over,  she  put  off  her  rich  robes, 
resumed  her  sober  widow’s  weeds,  buried  herself  once  more 
in  the  solitude  of  her  own  house,  and  gave  up  the  half- 
century  of  life  which  remained  to  her  to  prayer,  fasting, 
alms-deeds,  and  the  cherished  worship  of  her  husband's 
memory. 


ANHA  THE  PROPHETESS. 

So  is  it  with  that  remarkable  woman  whom  we  meet  with 
in  the  temple  at  our  Lord's  presentation  therein, — Anna  the 
Prophetess.  She,  too,  had  been  left  a  widow  after  seven 
years  of  companionship  with  her  husband;  and  “  she  was 
a  widow  till  fourscore  and  four  years  ;  who  departed  not 
from  the  temple,  by  fasting  and  prayers,  serving  night  and 
day.” 

She  was  rewarded  by  beholding  in  the  flesh  the  Redeemer 
promised  to  Adam  and  Eve  in  the  garden,  and  whose  glory, 
like  the  first  fires  of  sunrise  above  the  eastern  hills,  patri¬ 
archs  and  prophets  had  only  looked  on  “from  afar.'’  She 
was  also  privileged  to  see  in  the  temple  the  Mother  most 
blessed  who  was  prefigured  by  Eve  as  well  as  by  Judith. 

These  are  only  landmarks  on  the  glorious  pathway  of 
true  womanhood,  pointing  out  in  the  inspired  writings  the 
honor  paid  to  fidelity  and  the  reward  bestowed  on  it  even 
in  this  life. 


112 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


IDEAL  UNITY  AND  ETERNITY  OF  CONJUGAL  LOYE. 

They  teach  this  lesson,  at  all  events :  That  the  purest 
and  greatest  of  women  considered  the  love,  which  they  had 
given  to  the  husband  of  their  youth  as  a  something  so 
sacred,  a  gift  so  divine,  that  they  could  allow  no  other  love 
to  intrude  upon  it ;  they  had  meant  it  to  last  for  all  time 
and  for  all  eternity,  and  as  such  they  cherished  it,  even 
when  their  loved  companion  had  been  taken  early  away 
from  them. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  this  ideal  eternity  and  unity  of 
conjugal  love  is  that  upheld  and  blessed  by  the  Church. 

But  what  is  of  the  deepest  practical  importance,  is 


FIDELITY  TO  THE  LIVING. 


Of  this  we  have  most  touching  examples  all  through  the 
pages  of  Christian  history.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  insist  at 
length  upon  this,  where  matrimonial  unions  are  well  as¬ 
sorted,  and  where,  on  both  sides,  there  is  the  fear  of  God,  a 
love  blessed  of  Him,  and  all  the  charities  of  the  home-life  ever 
fed  by  the  reception  of  the  sacraments.  It  is  where  a  union 
is  ill-assorted,  unhappy,  and  where,  particularly,  the  hus¬ 
band  happens  to  be  any  thing  or  every  thing  save  what  the 
wife  in  her  innocent  dreams  of  goodness  and  manliness  con¬ 
ceived  as  the  real  character  of  her  lover. 

It  is  in  the  home  where  these  dreams  have  been  succeeded 
by  a  sad  awakening,  where  the  ideal  sought  after  and  loved 
turns  out  to  be  a  hideous  specter,  and  where  the  idol  the 
bride  worshiped  so  sincerely  has  been  dashed  to  pieces  on 
the  hearth-stone, — that  the  young  wife  needs  to  look  up  to 
God,  to  call  on  his  Name,  to  seek  for  his  grace  in  order  to 
be  true  to  him  and  to  herself, — in  spite  of  the  terrible  de¬ 
ception  of  which  she  is  the  victim. 

Let  us  give,  first,  a  few  pregnant  rules,  which  may  serve 
for  all,  whether  happy  or  otherwise  ; — we  shall  afterward 
point  out  to  the  unhappy  and  sorely  tried  the  only  road  on 
which  they  can  find  salvation. 


KEEP  TOUR  FAMILY  TROUBLES  TO  YOURSELF.  H3 


RULES. 

A  cardinal  principle  in  home-life  is,  never  to  allow  one’s 
self  to  suspect  or  to  distrust  one’ s  dear  ones,  save  only  when 
the  evidence  of  guilt  or  unworthiness  is  irresistible.  Even 
then,  the  terrible  truth  must  be  kept  secret  from  every 
living  soul ;  it  is  only  when  absolutely  necessary  and  in  an 
extremity  that  a  wife  should  mention  it, — though  never  so 
guardedly, — to  an  experienced  and  holy  guide.  From  one’s 
relatives  on  both  sides, — from  father  or  mother,  brother  or 
sister, — the  secret  should  be  strictly  and  sacredly  kept,  so 
long  as  the  reformation  and  salvation  of  the  guilty  one  or 
the  protection  of  one’s  children,  or  some  such  weighty  con¬ 
sideration,  does  not  compel  one  to  speak  so  much  of  the 
truth  as  is  needful. 

KEEP  YOUR  FAMILY  TROUBLES  TO  YOURSELF. 

It  is  impossible  for  a  wife  to  be  too  reserved  on  this  point : 
it  would  be  fatal  to  seek  confidants  even  in  one’ s  nearest 
and  dearest.  Where  conscience  is  concerned  extreme  care 
should  be  taken  both  in  choosing  the  person  to  be  consulted 
and  in  the  manner  in  which  the  communication  is  to  be 
made.  Even  a  father,  if  he  be  a  man  of  wisdom,  experi¬ 
ence,  and  high  principle,  will  rarely  encourage  a  married 
daughter  to  make  him  her  confidant  in  her  secret  troubles. 
If  he  has  been  a  good  husband,  blessed  with  a  good  wife, 
his  own  heart  will  have  taught  him  how  jealous  a  husband 
is  of  seeing  any  man  made  his  wife’s  confidant. 

There  must  be  extreme  necessity,  then,  to  justify  a  wife 
in  revealing  her  troubles  to  priest  or  to  father,  — even  with 
all  the  reservations  made  above.  To  make  a  confidant  even 
of  a  brother,  is  most  unwise  under  any  but  very  extraordi¬ 
nary  circumstances ;  but  to  go  with  one’s  troubles  to  a 
stranger,  be  he  what  he  may,  is  to  court  danger,  and  to  go 
more  than  halfway  to  meet  ruin. 

If  confidence  given  to  persons  of  the  opposite  sex  is  fraught 
with  such  certain  peril,  how  much  more  so  is  friendship  ? 

8 


114 


THE  Mill  ROE  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


THE  FRIENDSHIPS  BANEFUL  TO  FIDELITY. 

Lady  friends  and  lady  confidantes  unwisely  chosen,  and 
kept  in  spite  of  a  husband’ s  remonstrances,  have  destroyed 
the  peace  of  many  a  home  where  there  was,  otherwise,  every 
element  of  happiness, — sincere  mutual  affection,  compan¬ 
ionship,  and  faith  in  each  other’s  virtue.  But  gentlemen 
friends — where  a  wife  is  so  bereft  of  sense,  of  discernment, 
of  womanly  tact,  as  to  permit  such  a  monstrosity  to  come 
into  her  life — gentlemen  friends  are  the  worst  enemies  of 
her  honor,  her  home,  and  the  happiness  of  all  belonging 
to  her. 

If  a  wife  be  already  happy  in  possessing  a  husband  who 
fulfills  her  ideal  of  manliness,  who  is  all  in  all  to  her,  she 
does  him  the  foulest  wrong  and  her  own  honor  irreparable 
injury  in  transferring  to  any  man  living  any  part  of  her  af¬ 
fections.  If,  as  we  suppose,  she  loves  her  husband  with  her 
whole  heart,  how  jealous  would  she  feel  of  any  woman  on 
whom  her  husband  would  bestow  any  thing  like  friendship  ! 
Would  she  not  resent  it — and  most  justly — as  a  grievous 
wrong  done  to  herself  ?  But  she  is  not  to  forget,  that,  in  a 
family,  a  husband’s  friendships  do  not  tend  to  bring  dis¬ 
honor  on  the  children,  like  the  aberrations  of  a  mother’s 
heart. 

W e  cannot  affirm  it  too  strongly,  the  honor  of  families  de¬ 
pends  chiefly  on  a  father’s  reputation  and  achievements; 
the  dishonor  of  families  on  the  unhallowed  friendships  of 
mothers. 


WHEN  DANGER  BEGINS. 

The  greatest  danger  for  the  heart  of  the  wife,  till  then 
blameless,  unconscious,  and  unsuspicious  of  evil,  arises  in 
those  seasons  of  deep  domestic  trouble,  discord,  and  unhap¬ 
piness.  It  is  in  these  seasons  of  trial  that  a  wife  should  go  to 
the  heart  of  the  Crucified  for  sympathy,  light,  and  strength. 
Oh  !  if  women  whose  hearts  are  sore  and  whose  troubled 
spirit  yearns  for  consolation  and  counsel,  only  knew  what 


THE  CHRISTIAN  WOMAN  SUPERNATURAL. 


115 


light  and  sweetness  and  energy  of  soul  can  be  found  in  one 
quarter  of  an  hour’s  secret  converse  with  the  Crucifix, — 
that  most  eloquent  of  books  and  most  enlightened  of  all 
counselors  and  consolers !  If  they  could  turn  aside  from 
the  hollow  and  dangerous  sympathies  of  human  friendship 
— even  when  least  perilous — and  betake  them  to  the  Divine 
Comforter,  who  evermore  dwells  on  our  altars,  what  a  heart 
they  would  find  there !  And  how  they  would  rise  from 
before  the  Vail  and  the  Mercy- Seat  refreshed,  strengthened, 
and  resolved  to  take  up  their  cross  and  follow  Him  ! 

How  many  of  our  purest,  bravest,  best  cannot  put  away 
from  them  the  cross  which  is  to  be  a  life-long  burden !  Bear 
it  they  must.  If  they  refuse  to  carry  it,  the  weight  crushes 
them ;  if  they  take  it  up  willingly,  joyously,  as  He  did,  it 
bears  them  forward,  imparting  to  them  an  energy  all  divine, 
and  heavenly  joys  amid  all  the  bitterness  of  earthly  trials  ! 

CARRY  YOUR  CROSS  AND  IT  WILL  CARRY  YOU. 

We  know  such  mourners, — whose  young  lives  have  been 
blighted  by  a  union  with  guilt,  secret  vice,  and  falsehood ; 
but  wdio  have  taken  up  the  cross  with  unflinching  courage, 
determined  to  make  of  the  ever-recurring  trials  and  humil¬ 
iations  of  each  day  a  mine  of  merit  with  which  to  purchase 
the  eternal  joys.  The  pleasant  and  loved  companionship 
about  which  their  maiden  dreams  had  been  busy,  had  turned 
out,  when  viewed  with  carnal  eyes  and  judged  in  the  light 
of  this  world’s  wisdom,  naught  else  but  being  hopelessly 
tied  to  a  loathsome  leper.  The  love  of  suffering,  to  which, 
under  the  divine  inspiration,  the  wife,  on  awakening  from 
her  dream,  opened  every  avenue  of  her  soul,  is  a  divine 
companionship, — it  is  treading  with  our  thorn-crowned  King 
the  bitter  but  glorious  road  of  crucifixion. 

THE  CHRISTIAN  WOMAN  IS  BOUND  TO  BE  SUPERNATURAL. 

This  lesson  addresses  itself  to  Christian  wives, — to  women 
bound  to  be  Supernatural , — who  are  supposed  to  have 


116 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


entered  on  their  matrimonial  engagements  with  superna¬ 
tural  motives  (and  the  not  doing  so  is  the  source  of  untold 
and  inconceivable  miseries),  who  profess  to  lead  a  superna¬ 
tural  life  amid  all  the  joys,  the  cares,  the  trials,  and  disap¬ 
pointments  of  their  subsequent  condition.  Woe  to  them, 
if  they  are  not  supernatural  and  lovers  of  the  cross  and  the 
Crucified,  when  the  fair  and  fond  visions  of  earthly  love 
requited  vanish  from  their  early  path  like  the  golden  clouds 
of  morning! 

There  is  one  book  out  of  which  every  young  wife,  from 
her  bridal  day,  would  do  well  to  read  a  daily  chapter  to  her 
companion — uThe  Imitation  of  Christ:”  it  is  brimful  of 
the  Spirit  of  God.  Would  that  the  wife  on  whose  life  the 
shadow  of  the  dreadful  heart-trials  hinted  at  here  falls  for 
the  first  time,  would  take  up  this  almost  divine  book,  and 
read  such  passages  as  the  following : 

44  O  Lord  God,  holy  Father,  be  thou  now  and  forever 
blessed !  For,  as  Thou  wilt,  even  so  hath  it  been  done  to 
me  ;  and  what  Thou  dost  is  good. 

44  Let  thy  servant  take  joy  in  Thee,  not  in  herself  nor  in 
any  other  being.  For,  Thou  alone  art  true  joy, — Thou  art 
my  hope  and  my  crown, — Thou,  O  Lord,  art  my  bliss  and 
my  honor ! 

44  O  Father,  just,  holy,  and  ever  to  be  praised,  the  hour  of 
trial  is  come  for  thy  servant. 

4  4  Father  ever  to  be  loved,  it  is  right  that  in  this  hour  thy 
servant  should  suffer  somewhat  for  thy  sake. 

44  Father  to  be  perpetually  reverenced,  the  hour  hath  come 
which  from  all  eternity  Thou  didst  foresee  as  about  to  be 
sent  to  me  ; — that  thy  servant  should  be  outwardly  borne 
down,  but  should,  interiorly,  still  live  unto  Thee ;  that  she 
should  be  for  a  little  time  held  of  no  account,  humiliated, 
and  disappear  from  the  sight  of  man, — that  she  should  be 
crushed  beneath  the  weight  of  suffering  and  helplessness  ; 
in  order  that  so  she  may  rise  as  from  the  grave  in  the  dhwn 
of  a  new  light,  and  be  glorified  in  Heaven. 

4  4  Holy  Father,  so  Thou  hast  appointed,  and  so  willed,  and 
this  hath  come  to  pass  which  Thou  hast  ordained. 


GLORIOUS  EXAMPLES  OF  FIDELITY. 


117 


“  For  this  is  a  favor  to  Thy  friend,  that  she  should  suffer 
and  be  afflicted  in  this  world  for  the  love  of  Thee,  how  often 
soever,  by  whom  soever,  and  in  what  manner  soever  Thou 
permittest  it  to  befall  her.”  * 

THE  CRUCIFIX  AND  “  THE  IMITATIOX  OF  CHRIST.” 

What  soul  will  not  rise  from  the  foot  of  the  crucifix, 
after  such  a  prayer  as  this,  with  the  consciousness,  the 
deep-seated  conviction,  that  God  with  her  and  in  her  will 
enable  her  to  face  and  overcome  the  trials  before  her  ? 

It  is  time  that  in  every  Christian  household  mothers 
should  inculcate  the  lesson — morning,  noon,  and  night — that 
their  children — both  sons  and  daughters— never  will  be  or 
can  be  any  thing,  unless  they  study  before  and  above  all 
things  else  to  be  Supernatural  men  and  women. 

They  must  be  that,  or  they  will  become  worse  than 
pagans. 

But  let  us  look  into  the  mirror  of  a  life  tried  by  humilia¬ 
tions  and  sufferings  such  as  no  one  of  our  readers  (we  may 
safely  predict  it)  will  ever  be  called  on  to  endure  ; — and  we 
shall  see  therein  how  a  brave  womanly  heart  can  find  cour¬ 
age  to  be  the  light  and  benefactress  of  a  whole  country, 
while  that  same  heart  is  riven  by  the  most  terrible  domestic 
griefs. 

GLORIOUS  EXAMPLES  OF  FIDELITY — THE  CHILD-WIFE. 

We  shall  not  give  the  names  of  the  persons  or  the  coun¬ 
tries  till  our  glorious  tale  be  told,  and  the  lesson  hath  sunk 
deep  into  the  mind  of  the  attentive  reader. 

A  child  of  thirteen,  reared  with  the  most  extraordinary 
care,  and  responding  by  every  excellence  and  grace  of  mind 
and  heart  to  this  most  careful  culture,  our  heroine  was  given 
in  marriage  to  one  much  her  elder,  and  who  to  extraordi¬ 
nary  qualities  added  passions  and  vices  which  threatened  to 
make  him  the  scourge  of  all  who  depended  on  him. 


*  “The  Imitation  of  Christ,”  b.  iii.,  c.  50. 


118 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


In  his  heart,  sullied  and  wasted  by  lawless  affections, 
there  was  no  room  for  any  thing  like  pure  and  true  love  for 
the  beautiful,  innocent,  and  artless  child  which  policy  had 
made  his  wife  ;  nor  could  an  intellect  dulled  and  clouded  by 
unbridled  sensuality  even  begin  to  understand  a  soul  which 
was  as  unconscious  of  evil  in  herself  or  in  others  as  the  babe 
newly  born. 

So  this  child- wife  was  allowed  to  indulge  amid  her  ser¬ 
vants,  in  the  beautiful  home  to  which  she  had  been  brought 
far  away  from  her  native  country,  all  her  tastes  for  piety 
and  beneficence  under  every  form, — while  her  husband  spent, 
during  months  and  years,  the  leisure  which  should  have 
been  devoted  to  her  in  the  most  scandalous  indulgence  and 
the  most  unworthy  companionship. 

The  light  only  dawned  on  the  forsaken  and  outraged  one 
by  degrees.  Hers  was  a  most  loving  nature ;  for  a  pure 
love  is  the  deepest  of  all.  But,  as  she  had  been  reared  in 
childhood  under  the  especial  care  of  a  grandfather,  whom 
three  kingdoms  venerated  as  a  living  saint,  she  had  been 
made  to  look  upon  offenses  toward  the  Divine  Majesty  as 
the  supreme  of  evils,  and  the  hideousness  of  sin  as  a  some¬ 
thing  surpassingly  loathsome. 

HOW  THE  CHILD-WIFE  BOEE  HEE  TEIAL. 

Though  the  knowledge  of  her  husband’ s  infidelity  inflicted 
a  wound  so  deep  that  her  life  was  feared  for,  she  never 
allowed  one  word  of  complaint  or  blame  to  escape  her  lips  ; 
but  she  moaned  unceasingly  over  the  outrage  done  to  God 
and  the  scandal  given  to  the  people.  She  undertook,  with 
the  thought  of  turning  away  the  divine  anger  from  him  and 
from  those  subject  to  him,  to  expiate  his  guilt  by  protracted 
prayer,  by  austerities  which  her  counselors  could  not  pre¬ 
vail  on  her  to  mitigate,  and  by  all  manner  of  alms-deeds 
and  works  of  mercy. 

The  hoary  sinners  who  had  encouraged  or  tolerated  her 
husband’ s  early  wickedness,  at  first  laughed  at  the  young 
wife’s  innocence,  simplicity,  and  evident  ignorance  of  all 


POWER  OF  PATIENCE  AND  SAINTLINESS  OF  LIFE.  119 


moral  evil.  But  they  were  touched  by  the  greatness  of  soul 
which  knew  not  how  to  utter  one  word  in  blame  of  the  guilt 
that  dishonored  her  home  and  her  husband  ;  and  they  were 
awed  into  veneration  and  love  by  the  courage  which  re¬ 
sented  so  openly  the  injury  done  to  the  Divine  honor,  and 
the  splendid  munificence  that  sought  to  make  of  the  poor 
and  the  suffering  intercessors  between  her  offended  God 
and  her  offending  husband. 

PATIENCE  AND  SAINTLINESS  OF  LIFE  ALL-POWEEFUL  TO 

WIN  BACK  A  IIEAKT. 

He,  too,  was  touched  by  the  sweet  and  uncomplaining 
sorrow  of  the  injured  wife.  The  sense'  of  wrong  had  suddenly 
transformed  her,  and,  in  a  day,  she  passed  from  the  guile¬ 
lessness  of  the  child  to  the  majesty  of  a  woman  sensible  to 
her  wrongs.  Yet,  not  a  word  or  a  look  betrayed  the  terrible 
grief  which  was  gnawing  away  her  heart’s  core. 

The  peerless  flower  of  beauty  and  spotless  purity  which 
had  been  laid  upon  his  bosom  was  drooping  before  his  eyes  ; 
the  atmosphere  of  evil  which  surrounded  him  had  blighted 
its  freshness.  He  was  conscience-stricken,  and  filled  with 
reverence,  if  not  yet  with  love,  for  the  angelic  creature  of 
whom  he  deemed  himself  unworthy. 

His  remorse  gave  her  the  hope  that  his  heart  was  not  dead. 
With  the  instinct  of  the  true  woman  and  the  saint,  which 
she  was,  she  resolved  to  win  that  soul  to  God  by  patience, 
and  by  the  irresistible  power  of  prayer  and  charity.  Of 
winning  his  love  to  herself  she  thought  not.  Thenceforward 
no  opportunity  was  lost  of  doing  on  every  side  all  the  good 
she  could  in  favor  of  the  sick,  the  poor,  and  the  erring. 
The  false  friends  and  companions  who  pandered  to  her  hus¬ 
band’  s  vices  and  shared  in  his  criminal  pleasures,  were  to 
her  but  a  portion  of  the  great  host  of  the  Evil  One  leagued 
together  to  destroy  men’s  souls  and  blight  all  that  was 
fairest  on  earth  :  she  was  fain  to  enlist  all  she  could  under 
the  banners  of  Goodness,  which  delighteth  not  so  much  in 
doing  good  as  in  making  others  good.  And  she  was  blessed. 


120 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


THE  ARMIES  OF  THE  POOR  AND  SICK  LIFTING  UP  THEIR 

HANDS  IN  PRAYER. 

The  Hosts  of  the  poor,  the  suifering,  and  the  reclaimed 
who  daily  and  nightly  lifted  up  their  prayers  in  union  with 
hers,  prevailed  with  heaven  ;  and  heaven' s  grace,  aided  by 
the  growing  splendor  of  the  young  wife’ s  spiritual  beauty, 
at  length  won  the  husband’s  heart.  The  conquest  was, 
however,  only  a  slow  one.  The  habits  of  evil  had  cast  roots 
too  deep  and  too  wide  into  that  rich  nature  to  permit  them 
to  be  plucked  up  in  a  day,  or  to  prevent  their  often  crop¬ 
ping  out  at  the  surface  in  spite  of  the  prudent  wife’s  con¬ 
stant  though  gentle  culture,  and  despite  his  own  generous 
Mfrts  at  thorough  amendment.  The  supernatural  wisdom 
which  sanctity  bestowed-  on  one  so  young  as  she  was,  taught 
her  a  patient  husbandry  bcfdh  in  eradicating  inveterate  evil 
and  in  waiting  for  the  growth  *0if  virtuous  fruits.  This,  she 
knew,  was  the  law  in  the  natural  world  around  her,  and 
she  also  knew  that  a  similar  law  regulated  the  supernatu¬ 
ral  life  of  souls.  c' 

>  v/  ■  ’i '  ‘  *  ’ .  !  A  * 

THE  HUSBAND’S  HEART  WON  TO  GOD  ANjD  HIS  WIFE. 

\ 

•  \ 

The  day  came,  ere  she  had  passed  out  of  her  early  wom¬ 
anhood,  when  she  was  blessed  with  the  certainty  That  her 
husband’s  heart  was  all  God’s  and  her  own.  Froim  that 
hour  her  happiness  was  unspeakable,  and  her  gratit  ude  to 
the  Author  of  all  heavenly  gifts  showed  itself  in  hdr  in¬ 
creased  fervor  and  joyousness,  and  in  her  unmeasured 
generosity  toward  the  poor.  From  that  hour  also  her  hus¬ 
band  lost  no  opportunity  of  proving  to  the  world  that  h  e 
had  determined  to  be  in  God’s  hand  a  docile  and  faithful 
instrument  for  every  blessed  purpose  which  his  own  con¬ 
science  and  the  wisdom  of  his  wife  might  counsel. 

Of  all  the  men  who  ever  wielded  power  in  that  ancient 
Catholic  land,  none  achieved  what  he  and  his  angel-wife 
thenceforward  planned  and  accomplished.  He  died  with 

i 

■  •  „  v  '  ‘  •  « 

’  .  •  .  I  ^.vv 

l 


THE  CALUMNIATOR  MIRACULOUSLY  PUNISHED .  121 

the  title  of  “Father  of  his  Country,”  given  to  him  by  the 
gratitude  of  his  contemporaries  and  confirmed  by  the  ad¬ 
miration  of  after-ages.  And  she,  his  savior,  his  better  self, 
the  prompter  of  every  heroic  and  patriotic  enterprise  l  She 
needed  not  to  be  called  the  mother  of  her  country :  she 

*/  7 

became  its  patron-saint  and  protectress,  and  the  memory  of 
her  perfect  life  still  helps  to  keep  alive  the  light  of  faith 
and  the  flame  of  charity  among  the  sad  ruins  of  national 
greatness. 

THE  wife’s  HEART  TRIED  BY  CALUMNY. 

Sorely  tried  as  had  been  the  fidelity  of  that  young  heart, 
it  was  not  spared, — even  when  happier  days  had  begun  to 
dawn  for  her, — the  most  cruel  pain  that  a  faithful  and 
sorely  tried  wife  can  endure.  She  was  calumniated  by  her 
servants,  and  rashly  suspected  by  her  husband,  but  too 
prone  to  see  the  motives  and  actions  of  others  in  the  light 
of  his  own  guilty  conscience.  One  most  painful  trial,  in 
particular,  is  recorded  by  historians.  A  page, — perhaps  a 
relative,  or  the  young  son  of  some  most  noble  family,  who 
had  commended  himself  to  his  mistress  by  uncommon  piety 
and  tenderness  toward  the  sick  and  poor, — was  frequently 
employed  on  errands  of  mercy.  This  excited  the  envy  or 
the  malignity  of  some  of  his  companions,  men  accustomed, 
in  all  likelihood,  to  serve  their  master’s  worst  vices,  and 
who  felt  themselves  ill  at  ease  in  the  chaste  atmosphere 
that  surrounded  his  lady. 

THE  CALUMNIATOR  MIRACULOUSLY  PUNISHED. 

However  the  calumny  was  insinuated,  it  was  but  too 
readily  believed,  and  the  instant  death  of  the  supposed 
culprit  was  resolved  upon.  It  was  an  age  of  violence, — 
when  might  made  law.  But  Providence  interfered  to  save 
the  innocent  and  punish  the  guilty.  The  calumniator  per¬ 
ished  by  the  hand  of  the  assassin,  and  through  the  very 
device  invented  to  take  the  life  of  his  victim.  The  hand  of 


122  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

God  was  visible.  Other  and  more  touching  instances  of 
miraculous  interposition  are  also  recorded  of  the  long  pe¬ 
riod  of  heart- trial  through  which  the  young  wife  had  to 
pass.  One  and  the  same  truth  shines  forth  from  all :  she 
had  placed  her  trust  in  God,  and  God  is  bound  not  to 
deceive  those  who  trust  in  him. 

THE  MORAL  CONCLUSION. 

And  thus  we  come  back  to  the  moral  purpose  of  our 
illustration.  Let  the  wife  whose  eyes  rest  on  these  words, 
if  Providence  should  ever  permit  her  soul  to  be  thus  tried 
in  the  furnace,  take  well  to  heart  these  other  words  from 
the  divine  book  already  quoted  : 

A  DIVINE  PRATER. 

“Without  Thy  counsel  and  providence,  and  without 
cause,  nothing  happeneth  on  earth.  It  is  good  for  me , 
0  Lord ,  that  thou  hast  humbled  me ;  that  I  may  learn  thy 
justifications  (Ps.  cxviii.  71) ;  that  I  may  cast  away  all 
pride  of  heart  and  presumption.  It  is  for  my  profit  that 
shame  hath  covered  my  face,  that  I  may  take  Thee  for  my 
consoler  rather  than  men.  .  .  .  There  is  not  one  among 

all  who  are  beneath  the  heavens  that  is  able  to  console  me 
but  thyself,  O  Lord  God,  the  heavenly  physician  of  souls, 
who  strikest  and  healest,  4  who  bringest  down  to  Hell  and 
leadest  back  again.’  Thy  discipline  is  upon  me ,  and  thy 
rod  itself  shall  instruct  me  (Ps.  xvii.  36).  .  .  . 

44  Behold,  O  beloved  Father,  I  am  in  thy  hands  ;  I  bow  my¬ 
self  down  under  the  rod  of  thy  correction.  .  .  .  Myself 

and  all  that  are  mine  I  commit  to  thee  for  chastening  ;  it  is 
better  to  be  chastised  here  than  hereafter.  .  .  .  Grant  me, 
0  Lord,  to  know  what  I  ought  to  know  ;  to  love  what  I  ought 
to  love  ;  to  praise  that  which  is  most  pleasing  to  thee,  to 
esteem  that  highly  which  to  thee  is  precious  ;  and  to  reject 
and  despise  what  thou  deemest  vile  and  worthless.”  '* 


*  “Imitation  of  Christ,”  iii.,  c.  1. 


THE  VANITY  WHICH  LEADS  TO  DISHONOR. 


123 


Such  sentiments  as  these  are  like  the  fragrant  air  of  the 
heavenly  hills  to  one  who  has  just  passed  through  the 
valley  of  the  shadow  of  death,  like  the  sudden  brightness 
and  warmth  of  sunlight  to  one  long  imprisoned  amid  the 
snows  and  darkness  of  an  arctic  region.  But  He,  who 
guided  the  pen  and  warmed  the  heart  of  the  man  who  wrote 
them,  will  know,  when  you  come  to  him  in  your  sore  need, 
how  to  whisper  far  sweeter  words  than  man  can  write, — for 
he  made  the  heart,  and  knoweth  where  lie  the  springs  of  its 
weakness  as  w^ell  as  of  its  power. 

LOVE  TRIED  IN  THE  FLAME. 

But  if  glowing  words  from  the  well-tried  heart  of  the 
sweetest  of  Catholic  singers  in  our  tongue  have  virtue  to 
warm  and  comfort,  then  read  : 

“  Let  thy  gold  be  cast  in  the  furnace, 

Tliy  red  gold,  precious  and  bright. 

Do  not  fear  the  hungry  fire, 

With  its  caverns  of  burning  light : 

And  thy  gold  shall  return  more  precious. 

Free  from  every  spot  and  stain  ; 

For  gold  must  be  tried  by  fire, 

As  a  heart  must  be  tried  by  pain  ! 

•  •••••  i 

“  I  shall  know  by  the  gleam  and  glitter 
Of  the  golden  chain  you  wear. 

By  your  heart’s  calm  strength  in  loving. 

Of  the  fire  they  have  had  to  bear. 

Beat  on,  true  heart,  forever  ; 

Shine  bright,  strong  golden  chain, 

And  bless  the  cleansing  fire, 

And  the  furnace  of  living  pain  !  ”  * 

THE  VANITY  WHICH  LEADS  TO  DISHONOR. 

Would  it  not  be  a  most  ungracious  act  to  darken  these 
pages  with  a  description,  though  never  so  brief  and  lightly 
shaded,  of  the  home,  whether  of  rich  or  poor,  ruined  or 


*  Adelaide  Anne  Procter,  “  Legends  and  Lyrics.” 


124 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


made  desolate  by  infidelity  ?  Better  far,  so  our  readers  will 
think  with  us,  to  paint  the  heroic  constancy  and  preter¬ 
natural  joys  of  the  faithful  wife,— faithful  even  while  “  the 
hungry  fire  with  its  caverns  of  burning  light  ’  ’  was  trying 
and  searching  every  corner  of  her  heart. 

Only  let  a  priestly  hand  add,  before  concluding  this  most 
important  chapter ;  a  brief  warning  and  as  brief  an  exhor¬ 
tation. 

If  it  be  most  true,  and  the  voice  of  experience  attests 
that  it  is,  that  the  danger  for  the  womanly  heart  tried  to  its 
utmost  by  marital  unworthiness,  lies  in  the  need  of  sym¬ 
pathy  ;  so,  in  happy  homes,  where  there  exists  perfect  love 
and  neither  unsuitability  nor  disappointment,  ruin  comes 
from  vanity  and  from  the  appetite  for  display  and  enjoy¬ 
ment. 

THE  HOME-PLEASURES  WHICH  ARE  A  SAFEGUARD  TO 

HOHOR. 

Against  this  vanity  there  is  no  remedy,  apart  always 
from  the  grace  of  the  sacraments  and  these  aids  which  God 
may  vouchsafe  to  some  souls  ;  there  is  no  remedy,  we  say, 
but  in  a  wife’s  never  seeking  to  please  any  other  eye  than 
that  of  her  husband,  or  valuing  any  praise  on  dress,  per¬ 
sonal  appearance,  and  accomplishment  of  any  kind,  but 
what  falls  from  his  dear  lips,  or  caring  for  any  amusement 
that  is  not  shared  by  him,  or  in  wishing  to  have  any  theater 
for  the  display  of  any  gift  natural  or  acquired,  how  tran¬ 
scendent  soever,  save  the  bosom  of  one’s  own  family. 

We  have  heard  of  women,  most  gifted  and  most  accom¬ 
plished,  who,  blessed  with  a  large  family,  and  burdened 
with  the  care  of  a  numerous  household,  made  it  a  point  of 
conscience  to  dress  every  day  of  their  lives,  even  in  extreme 
old  age,  with  the  greatest  care,  in  order  to  please  their  hus¬ 
bands,  and  give  them  thereby  an  outward  proof  of  undimin¬ 
ished  love ;  and  to  please  their  children,  by  ever  setting 
them  an  example  worthy  of  imitation.  With  these  admir¬ 
able  wives  and  mothers  it  had  been  a  life-long  study  how 


LOVE  OF  DISPLAY  WHICH  KNOWS  NOT  PERIL.  125 


to  make  tlieir  own  gifts  and  accomplishments  contribute 
daily  to  the  delight  of  the  family  circle.  Intellectual  and 
artistic  culture,  music  and  song,  and  the  charming  illusions 
of  private  dramatic  entertainments,  all  was  made  to  serve 
the  one  great  purpose  of  rendering  home  the  sweetest, 
brightest,  dearest  spot  of  earth. 

THE  LOVE  OF  DISPLAY  WHICH  KNOWS  NOT  PEKIL. 

One  need  not  fear  to  display  to  the  utmost  within  the 
home  sanctuary  and  for  the  delights  of  one’s  own  dearest, 
every  best  gift  of  God  ;  the  praise  which  comes  from  these 
dear  lips  is  not  that  which  intoxicates  dangerously ;  the 
vanity  which  such  praise  may  create  is  not  that  which  is  to 
be  dreaded  by  mother  or  by  daughter  ;  and  the  delicious 
satisfaction  enjoyed  both  by  the  delight  a  wife  and  mother 
gives,  and  by  that  which  she  receives  in  return,  is  not  one 
which  the  good  angels  may  look  on  with  displeasure. 

On  the  contrary,  the  love  of  praise  and  display,  which  is 
so  common  and  so  natural  in  a  certain  measure,  will  find 
its  lawful  and  most  healthful  satisfaction  in  these  home- 
pleasures  and  celebrations  ;  in  these  lie  the  antidote  or  pre¬ 
servative  against  the  vanity  fraught  with  peril. 

Home-life,  home-pleasures,  home-virtues,  in  this  respect, 
as  in  so  many  others,  are  the  great  means  Providence  em¬ 
ploys,  and  religion  counsels,  to  prevent  or  to  counteract  the 
tendencies  toward  finding  one’s  only  or  chief  distractions 
and  enjoyments  outside  of  home  and  the  family  circle. 
There  are  men  who  only  sleep  at  home,  and  spend  the  re¬ 
mainder  of  their  time  outside  of  it.  They  cannot  be  said  to 
have  a  home,  or  to  have  any  conception  of  what  a  home  is 
or  could  be.  If  they  are  blessed  with  wives  able  and  anxious 
to  make  their  homes  a  paradise  for  them,  what  shall  we  say 
of  their  folly  or  their  guilt  1  And  who  will  pity  them,  if 
the  home  thus  forsaken  and  absolutely  neglected  by  its  ap¬ 
pointed  guardian  should  become  a  prey  to  the  Tempter  \ 

But  of  the  women  who  only  make  their  homes  a  brief 
breathing  or  resting-place  in  their  unbroken  and  eternal 


126 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


round  of  vanity  and  dissipation,  we  need  only  say  what 
every  body  sees, — that  the  curse  is  upon  them,  and  that 
shame  is  ever  flitting  round  their  homes, — like  these  legen¬ 
dary  evil  spirits  that  haunt  the  precincts  of  families  doomed 
to  perdition. 

To  the  nobility  of  true  womanly  natures  we  need  not  re¬ 
commend  to  be  watchful  over  the  sanctity  of  the  homes  in 
which  they  are  the  priestesses  of  the  family  religion,  the  jeal¬ 
ous  guardians  and  loving  teachers  of  the  Ancestral  Faith,  and 
the  custodians  of  that  treasure, — dearer  and  more  precious 
to  every  home  where  God  is  feared  and  men’ s  good  opinion 
is  valued  than  royal  power  or  fabulous  wealth, — the  peer¬ 
less  jewel,  Honor. 

HONOR,  THE  TREE  OF  LIFE  OF  THE  HOME  PARADISE. 

When  our  first  parents  were  thrust  forth  from  Paradise, 
they  might  have  seen,  as  they  turned  to  have  one  last  look 
at  what  they  had  lost  forever, — cherubim  set  there  to  guard 
its  entrance,  “and  a  flaming  sword,  turning  every  way,  to 
keep  the  way  of  the  tree  of  life.”  To  you,  O  faithful  women, 
who  read  this,  be  this  truth  welcome :  Your  Paradise  is 
your  home,  the  tree  of  life  is  your  honor,  and  from  beneath 
its  shade,  from  the  sweet  and  safe  center  of  .your  bliss  you 
can  look  to  the  gate  of  your  Eden,  and  see  with  the  eyes  of 
faith,  as  certainly  as  you  see  your  own  right  hand,  God’s 
angels  set  to  guard  your  home,  and  the  “  flaming  sword, 
turning  every  way”  to  defend  you  and  yours  from  evil. 

So,  when  evil,  overleaping  the  walls  of  your  sanctuary, 
would  threaten  to  desecrate  its  holiness  and  steal  away 
its  priceless  treasures,  remember  the  noble  rebuke  of  the 
Spanish  maiden  to  the  invaders  of  her  father’s  home  :  “Do 
you  know  where  you  are  ?  Do  you  know  that  this  is  the 
house  of  a  man  rich  in  virtue  ?  .  .  .  The  house  of  my 

father  is  the  center  of  loyalty  and  the  sanctuary  of  honor !  ” 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  MOTHETfc. 

When  at  some  holy  festival  or  eve  the  church  at  nightfall  begins  to  be  filled 
with  confused  steps  and  lighted  tapers  ;  when,  amidst  the  chant  of  men  and 
children  and  women,  a  figure  can  be  distinguished  among  all  these,  in  a  far 
recess,  half  obscured,  having  grouped  around  her  near  the  sombre  wall  four 
young  heads,  on  which  she  casts  at  times  a  look  more  sweet  than  solemn, — oh  ! 
whoever  you  may  be,  bless  her  !  It  is  she — the  sister,  visible  to  the  eyes  of  my 
immortal  soul  :  my  pride,  my  hope,  my  shelter  ;  the  joy  of  my  young  years  : 
the  hoped-for  treasure  of  my  age  ; — it  is  she — the  wife  who  has  no  joy  but  my 
happiness  ;  who,  if  my  children  or  myself  ever  seem  to  totter  on  the  brink, 
without  a  severe  word  or  a  reproachful  look  supports  them  with  the  hand,  and 
me  with  the  heart  ;  she  to  whom  I  have  said  always,  and  who  has  said  to  me  : 
“  through  all  !  ”  It  is  she,  in  a  word,  a  flower  of  beauty,  which  goodness 
has  perfumed  :  the  flower  is  of  earth,  and  the  fragrancy  of  Heaven. — Quoted  by 
Digby  in  Compitum. 

The  above  poetic  picture  presents  tne  true  woman  in  the 
twofold  aspect  of  wife  and  mother, — young  still  and  in  the 
active  discharge  of  her  duties  as  such, — and  hence  this  quo¬ 
tation  serves  as  an  apt  transition  to  the  all-important  sub¬ 
ject  which  now  solicits  our  deepest  interest.  The  faithful 
love  which  clings  to  husband,  home,  and  honor,  “  through 
all,”  through  the  storm,  the  flame,  and  the  sea  of  bitterness, 
will  not  be  apt  to  omit  one  sweet  duty  of  motherhood. 
Even  when  all  her  womanly  virtues  are  powerless  to  exor¬ 
cise  the  demon  of  evil  from  her  household,  there  remains  to 
her,  in  the  discharge  of  her  maternal  office,  an  unfailing 
source  of  deepest  consolation  as  well  as  of  merit  before  God 
and  man. 

127 


128 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


And  here  it  is,  most  especially,  that  it  behooves  woman  to 
be  supernatural,  so  that  the  result  of  her  motherly  labors 
shall  be  to  make  of  her  dear  ones  men  and  women  truly  de¬ 
serving  the  name  of  children  of  God. 

MEANING  OF  THE  TEEM  u  SUPEENATUEAL,”  AS  APPLIED 

HEEE. 

When  the  word  supernatural  is  used,  the  entire  non- 
Catholic  world,  as  well  as  a  great  many  Catholics — even  ed¬ 
ucated  Catholics — are  but  too  apt  to  entirely  misapprehend 
its  meaning.  There  is  in  the  modern  mind,  particularly 
where  the  masses  are  not  Catholic,  a  disposition  to  look 
upon  whatever  is  supernatural  as  contrary  to  nature,  and 
therefore  absurd,  or  as  miraculous,  and  therefore  outside  of 
the  common  laws  of  action  and  beyond  our  ordinary  reach. 

There  is  a  general  tendency  to  reject  the  supernatural  or¬ 
der  altogether,  and  to  admit  nothing  as  existing  or  possible 
but  what  is  strictly  in  accordance  with  nature. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  a  philosophical  or  theological  dis¬ 
quisition.  But  every  mother  will  be  glad  to  find  here  'clear 
and  simple  notions  enabling  her  to  seize  at  a  glance  what 
the  supernatural  order  is,  and  so  to  convey  the  light  in  her 
own  mind  to  that  of  her  children  all  through  her  training. 

Looking  upon  the  human  race  as  one  great  family  com¬ 
posed  of  the  descendants  of  the  one  father  and  the  one  mo¬ 
ther,  and  considering  them  in  their  relation  to  God’ s  govern¬ 
ment  over  them  in  this  life  and  the  life  to  come, — we  conceive 
that  He  who  created  them,  could  reward  them  after  death  in 
accordance  with  their  degree  of  fidelity  to  the  law  of  nature 
written  equally  on  the  heart  of  the  savage  and  on  that  of  the 
civilized  man.  This  would  be  the'  “ natural  order”  in  which 
God  would  impose  upon  men  no  duties  beyond  those  of  love, 
obedience,  reverence  and  worship  to  Himself,— of  the  recipro¬ 
cal  obligations  and  duties  which  bind  together  husband  and 
wife,  parents  and  children, — family  to  family,  and  toward 
the  authorities  lawfully  acknowledged  in  civil  society. 
The  virtues  of  truthfulness,  honor,  honesty,  and  of  the  gen- 


MEANING  OF  THE  TERM  “  SUPERNA  TER  ALE 


129 


eral  brotherly  charity  which  should  make  every  man  look 
upon  all  other  men  as<his  brothers, — the  reverence  for  jus¬ 
tice  in  all  one’s  dealings, — and  so  many  other  virtues  that 
need  not  be  named,  belong  to  the  “natural  order,”  and  are, 
inseparable  from  man’ s  condition  under  God’ s  providence. 

But  the  supernatural  order,  without  doing  away  with  a 
single  one  of  these  natural  virtues,  obligations,  duties,  and 
charities,  considers  man  as  belonging  to  a  higher  condition, 
to  which,  with  all  his  natural  powers  and  virtues  and  duties, 
he  has  been  raised  by  the  gratuitous  love  of  his  Creator. 
Man  never  could,  in  any  supposition,  have  been  created 
■without  being  bound  to  his  Maker  by  service  in  this  life,  by 
charity  and  justice  toward  his  fellow-men,  and  by  the  retri¬ 
bution  of  the  immortality  following  after  such  service  and 
fellowship.  But  God  was  not  content  to  leave  man  in  this 
essential  condition  of  mere  natural  service,  fellowship,  and 
charity ; — He  raised  him  to  the  rank  of  His  own  adopted 
child,  imparted  to  his  mind  a  distinct  knowledge  of  this 
glorious  destiny,  to  his  heart  sentiments  and  energies  ena¬ 
bling  him  to  live  up  to  it,  added  to  man’s  natural  duties, 
obligations,  and  virtues,  new  aims,  new  obligations,  a  higher 
charity, — a  new  ideal  of  goodness  and  greatness,  and  gene¬ 
rosity,  all  looking  forward  to  an  eternal  fellowship  with  God 
in  his  own  inner  life  in  the  world  to  come. 

Thus  the  supernatural  order  is  that  in  which  God  stands 
in  the  relation  of  Father  to  us,  in  which  we  hold  the  rank 
of  his  real  adopted  children,  with  all  the  sentiments,  obliga¬ 
tions,  rights,  honors,  and  graces  attendant  on  this  sublime 
elevation,  all  tending  to  the  possession  of  that  glory  of  the 
life  to  come, — the  beatific  vision,  the  seeing  God  face  to  face, 
the  being  taken  into  society  with  the  Three  Infinite  Persons 
of  the  Godhead,  and  into  fellow-citizenship  with  his  angels. 

This  adoption,  this  divine  rank,  these  graces  given  in  this 
life  to  mind  and  heart,  and  this  unspeakably  glorious  and 
blissful  fellowship  of  eternity,  is  a  something  so  far  above 
nature,  so  undue  to  it,  so  entirely  beyond  its  requirements 
and  capacities,  that  it  is  deservedly  called  “  supernatural,” 
that  is — above  and  beyond  nature. 

9 


180 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


HOW  THE  CHILD  MUST  BE  MADE  ACQUAINTED  WITH  THE 

SUPERNATURAL  ORDER. 

To  inculcate  on  her  children,  as  soon  as  their  reason 
begins  to  dawn,  that  God  is  not  only  their  Maker  as  he  is 
that  of  the  heavens  above  them  and  the  earth  around  them, 
but  also  to  them  a  true  Father,  who  cares  for  them  and 
gives  them  a  right  to  the  most  magnificent  of  all  inherit¬ 
ances,  must  be  one  of  the  Christian  mother’s  early  cares. 
Her  own  sense  of  piety,  her  womanly  wit  and  instinctive 
knowledge  of  child-nature  will  teach  her  the  best  methods 
to  be  employed  in  order  to  let  in  by  degrees,  and  one  after 
the  other,  the  beautiful  and  divine  realities  of  the  super¬ 
natural  order, — of  that  kingdom  of  God,  whose  sovereign  is 
true  Father  to  us, — of  that  glorious  world  in  which  Christ 
and  his  Blessed  Mother  are  central  figures. 

There  are  few  households  so  poor  but  they  can  afford  to 
have  one  or  two  sweet  prints  representing  the  mysteries  of 
our  Lord’ s  infancy  and  childhood,  as  well  as  a  handsome 
crucifix,  or,  at  least,  a  good  print  of  the  crucifixion.  It  is 
well  to  reject  the  abominable  daubs  published  in  our  large 
cities  and  “misrepresenting”  every  subject  they  profess  to 
set  before  the  devout  mind.  The  sweet  pictures  of  the 
Blessed  Mother  and  her  Babe  by  Luini,  or  Fra  Bartolomeo, 
and  Crucifixions  by  such  religious  painters  as  Velasquez, 
cannot  fail  to  produce  a  powerful  impression.  There  are 
good  engravings  of  them,  for  which  it  would  be  well  to 
pay  a  little  more  ; — good  chromos,  like  those  published  in 
London  by  the  Arundel  Society,  are,  unfortunately,  beyond 
the  reach  of  poor  families.  Would  that  we  had  both  in 
city  and  country  parishes  some  sodality  interested  in  seeing 
that  the  homes  of  the  laboring  classes  were  provided  with 
such  objects  of  religious  art  as  would  inspire  reverence  and 
piety  in  the  beholder.  Nor  must  mothers  forget  to  have  a 
little  statue  or  a  print  of  the  Angel  Guardian  ;  he  is  a  friend 
to  be  known  and  loved  early. 

It  must  be  the  part  of  the  judicious  mother  to  explain  in 


THE  CRUCIFIX. 


131 


due  time  to  her  little  ones,  when  they  are  able  to  inquire 
about  that  heavenly  W  oman  and  her  Babe,  what  relation 
they  both  bear  to  us.  Some  mothers,  we  know,  have  in 
their  nurseries  “The  Flight  into  Egypt”  or  the  “  Adora¬ 
tion  of  the  Magi,”  subjects  which  will  naturally  oblige  the 
children  to  inquire  about  the  birth  of  the  Divine  Babe,  and 
the  whole  story  of  his  birth. 

When,  precisely,  parents  can  draw  the  affection  of  the 
child-mind  to  the  story  of  the  Passion,  and  the  Crucifix, 
they  alone  can  determine.  Some  are  averse  to  doing  so 
before  children  are  a  little  more  advanced  in  years.  Cer¬ 
tain  it  is  that  they  should  be  made  acquainted  with  the 
sufferings  of  our  Divine  Benefactor  before  they  emerge  from 
childhood.  This  point  of  time  being  left  to  the  judgment  of 
mothers,  let  us  be  firmly  convinced  that  of  all  the  vehicles 
of  supernatural  instruction  and  solid  piety  there  is  no  one 
more  efficacious  than 

THE  CRUCIFIX. 

The  Crucifix  in  Catholic  households  is  not  only  the  most 
eloquent  and  instructive  of  books  for  youth  and  old  age ; 
but  it  can  also  be  made  to  speak  divinely  to  the  sense  of 
childhood.  Children  are  all  athirst  for  knowledge  once 
they  begin  to  speak  and  to  be  capable  of  instruction  by 
word  of  mouth.  Their  mind  and  imagination  are  forcibly 
impressed  by  the  figure  of  the  Man  of  Sorrows  nailed  to  the 
bitter  tree.  They  are  quick  to  seize  the  reverence,  the  love, 
the  worship  with  which  a  mother  or  a  nurse  looks  upon 
this  pregnant  story  of  Love  Crucified.  Who  is  He  ?  What 
brought  Him  there  %  What  He  is  to  us ;  what  we  owe 
Him,  hope,  and  fear  from  Him,  are  lessons  which  a  child 
may  soon  learn, — for  they  are  questions  which  arise  in  his 
own  mind,  and  to  which  he  is  impelled  to  seek  an  answer 
by  a  Prompter  within  him. 

For  Christian  mothers  should  not  forget  that  in  the 
infant  soul  dwells  the  Divine  Spirit,  communicated  in  bap¬ 
tism,  and  never  expelled  thence  save  by  voluntary  mortal 


132  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

sin.  In  the  sonl  of  every  mother,  too,  who  is  in  a  state  of 
grace,  dwells  the  same  Divine  Instructor,  prompting  her  to 
do  her  duty  by  her  child,  and  pledged  to  aid  her  in  her 
work. 

THE  DIVINE  SPIRIT’S  SHARE  IN  THE  WORK  OF  EDUCATION. 

Surely  it  must  be  a  consolation  and  an  encouragement  to 
the  mother  to  know  that  in  this  laborious  but  sweet  work 
of  forming  each  mind  and  heart  under  her  care,  she  is  doing 
God’ s  own  most  blessed  work,  in  which  she  has  a  right  to 
count  on  his  most  effective  and  continual  co-operation. 

In  imparting  instruction,  in  forming  the  minds  and  hearts 
of  her  dear  ones,  the  mother  only  does  one  part  of  God’ s 
work  ;  He  takes  on  himself  to  do  the  other  and  the  most  im¬ 
portant  part.  This  she  must  rely  *  on  with  undoubting  cer¬ 
tainty  ;  but  this,  unhappily,  is  what  so  many  Christian 
mothers  never  think  of. 

Let  them,— such,  at  least,  as  are  desirous  of  profiting  by 
the  directions  here  given, — only  look  at  the  work  of  the 
husbandman.  He  clears  away  the  ground  in  which  he  pur¬ 
poses  to  grow  his  crop  ;  plows  it,  prepares  and  examines 
his  seed,  casts  it  in  the  furrows,  and  covers  it  over.  The 
rest  is  the  work  of  all-bountiful  nature, — of  Him,  rather, 
who  is  the  all- wise  and  provident  author  of  nature.  He 
gives  the  warmth,  the  rain,  and  the  dew.  His  hand  unfolds 
the  rich  germ  in  the  soil,  till  it  grows  up  and  fructifies 
and  ripens  for  the  harvest. 

So  is  it  with  your  culture,  O  mothers  :  the  precious  seeds 
of  truth  which  you  cast  into  the  minds  of  your  children, 
just  when  the  spring-tide  of  their  souls  begins  to  dawn,  are 
far  more  the  care  of  God  than  the  crops  of  the  husband¬ 
man, — dear  as  these  surely  are  to  His  fatherly  providence. 
Fear  not  then  but  his  Holy  Spirit  dwelling  in  the  dear  souls 
you  are  cultivating,  will  shed  on  the  germs  you  deposit  the 
warmth  of  his  sunlight,  the  late  and  the  early  rain.  Do 
your  best, — and  trust  to  the  Divine  Husbandman  for  the 
certain  increase  and  the  rich  harvest  in  his  own  good 
season. 


THE  CROSS  THE  ALPHABET  OF  KNOWLEDGE. 


133 


THE  CROSS  IS  THE  ALPHABET  OF  SPIRITUAL  KNOWLEDGE. 

Tlie  all-important  thing  for  you  is,  that,  above  and  before 
all  things,  your  children  should  understand  that  they  are 
“  children  of  God,”  that  Christ  is  their  Elder  Brother,  who 
has  purchased  them  with  his  blood  the  right  to  co-heirship 
with  him.  The  mystery  of  the  Cross  and  the  Crucified,  once 
understood  by  them,  will  be  a  central  light  in  which  they 
can  read  all  history  before  and  after  his  death. 

It  is  impossible  for  children  to  get  a  true  knowledge  of 
that  great  love,  without  feeling  their  hearts  overflowing  with 
love  for  Him,  as  well  as  for  that  dear  Mother  who  stood  in 
sorrow  beneath  the  tree  on  which  her  adored  One  hung  in 
the  death  agony.  Friendships  formed  in  childhood,  in  the 
lovely  years  of  innocence  and  youth,  are  friendships  that 
last  forever.  Make  your  dear  ones  love  that  Friend  well, — 
and  He  will  take  care  that  no  lapse  of  time  or  change  of 
mind  and  heart,  that  no  perversity  of  men,  or  experience  of 
false-heartedness  through  life,  shall  disturb  the  image  of 
that  august  and  early  affection  in  the  soul’s  inmost  sanc¬ 
tuary. 

Make  the  Crucified  and  the  Mother  of  Sorrows  the  first 
friends  of  every  child  of  yours  ;  and  fear  not  but  they  will 
befriend  them  in  life  and  death. 

What  has  just  been  said  will  suggest  how  a  true  mother’s 
teaching  and  formation  may  be  supernatural  in  all  other  re¬ 
spects.  Particular  stress  has  been  laid  here  on  early  devo¬ 
tion  to  our  crucified  Lord,  both  because  it  is  the  foundation 
of  all  the  rest,  and  because  in  our  eagerness  to  read  all  the 
trash  daily  poured  forth  by  the  modern  press,  we  seem  not 
to  bestow  one  thought  on  that  Book  of  books — the  Crucifix. 

EARLY  LOVE  OF  CHILDREN  FOR  THE  CRUCIEIED. 

Even  Catholics,  nowadays,  read  with  astonishment  or  half¬ 
incredulity  what  is  related  of  the  early  love  for  our  dear 
Lord  and  his  Blessed  Mother  of  St.  Stanislas,  St.  Aloysius, 
St.  Bose  of  Lima;  or  St.  Teresa  and  her  little  brother  Bo- 


134  * 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


drigo, — without  mentioning  instances  taken  from  the  writers 
of  the  middle  ages.  Children,  almost  before  the  ordinary 
dawn  of  reason,  become  enamored  of  Him  whose  unspeak¬ 
able  love  is  sculptured  in  such  divine  characters  in  that  ever 
open  and  most  simple  book  of  the  Crucifix.  A  sacred 
thirst  of  voluntary  suffering  takes  such  possession  of  their 
souls  that  they  long  to  suffer  martyrdom, — as  we  read  of 
Teresa  and  her  favorite  brother.  St.  Francis  Borgia,  when 
quite  a  child  lost  his  mother,  the  Princess  Joanna,  of 
Aragon ;  but  her  teaching  and  example  had  so  familiar¬ 
ized  the  child  with  the  supernatural  love  of  suffering,  that, 
after  her  death,  he  could  not  be  prevented  from  fasting  for 
her  and  inflicting  pain  on  himself. 

There  can  be  no  mystery,  no  cause  for  wonder  in  this  when 
we  remember  that  the  domestic  piety  of  our  fathers  was 
grounded  on  an  intimate  knowledge  of  our  Lord  and  his 
mysteries.  The  birth  in  the  stable,  the  sudden  flight  across 
the  wilderness  to  Egypt,  the  hidden  and  laborious  life  at 
Nazareth,  and,  above  all,  the  history  of  his  passion,  were 
to  childhood  itself  living  realities, — so  was  the  divine  story 
with  all  its  impressive  circumstances  brought  home  to  them 
by  what  they  heard  and  what  they  saw !  They  could  not 
enter  one  of  the  beautiful  churches  of  olden  time,  with¬ 
out  finding  these  scenes  of  suffering  appealing  to  their 
young  souls  from  the  sculptured  doors  and  porticoes  out¬ 
side  and  from  the  painted  walls  and  windows  within  ; — 
while  in  that  great  book  of  the  Lamb, — such  as  every 
Christian  church  aimed  at  being, — they  saw,  grouped 
around  Christ  and  his  Mother  the  apostles  and  saints  who 
had  most  closely  imitated  them  by  their  suffering  life  and 
death. 

Faith  was  the  very  principle  and  breath  of  life  in  the  old 
Catholic  homes,  — and  the  great  central  mystery  of  faith,  the 
Crucifixion,  and  its  memorial  sacrifice,  the  Eucharist  and  the 
Mass,  were  to  the  youngest  children,  as  to  their  parents, 
teachings  brought  home  to  mind  and  heart,  not  for  mere 
sterile  admiration,  but  for  practical  gratitude  and  imitation. 


OTHER  QUALITIES  IN  THE  MOTHER'S  CHARACTER .  135 

From  this  living  spring  of  faith  in  the  young  heart 
flowed  the  piety  which  gave  a  color  to  the  entire  after-life. 
And  to  this  we  beg  the  earnest  attention  of  the  mothers  who 
read  our  pages.  With  this  supernatural  tendency  imparted 
to  thoughts  and  aims  and  actions  from  the  very  beginning 
of  childhood,  the  fundamental  natural  virtues  which  we 
shall  enumerate  further  on  are  sure  to  be  practiced  with 
the  supernatural  view  of  pleasing  the  Divine  Master  and 
Model. 

OTHER  QUALITIES  IN  THE  MOTHER’S  CHARACTER  AND 

GOVERNMENT. 

This  supernatural  spirit  animating  both  a  mother’s  life 
and  her  teaching,  will  only  be  successful  in  its  purpose  and 
labors  when  she  shows  herself  careful  to  cultivate  the  qual¬ 
ities  without  which  piety  would  be  barren  or  be  mistaken 
for  unreasoning  superstition  or  absurd  inconsistency. 

Every  mother  must  be  consistent  in  her  maxims  and  rules 
of  government.  Let  her,  in  her  moments  of  leisure  and 
1  solitude,  weigh  well  what  rules  she  is  to  lay  down  for  het 
children, — so  that  in  her  government  of  them  she  may  not 
1  be  exposed  to  either  promulgate  a  law  rashly  and  then  have 
to  withdraw  it,  or  to  contradict  at  night  what  she  has  said 
in  the  morning  with  all  seriousness,  or  to  undo  to-morrow 
|  what  she  is  doing  to-day. 

Children, — very  young  children  especially, — are  exceed- 
|  ingly  serious-minded.  They  mean  exactly  what  they  say, 
— and  they  think,  of  course,  that  their  elders,  superiors, 
and,  above  all,  their  parents,  mean  what  they  say.  You 
I  shake  their  confidence  in  you  when  they  discover — which 
they  do  with  amazing  quickness — that  you  did  not  mean 
what  you  said.  This  discovery  is  most  fatal  in  another  re¬ 
spect  ; — it  lays  the  foundation  for  the  child’s  untruthful¬ 
ness. 

Perfect  truthfulness  is  not  only  truth  in  our  words  when, 
i  they  are  the  exact  expression  of  our  knowledge  and  mean¬ 
ing,  giving  to  our  hearers  a  perfect  picture  of  our  mind  ;  it 

i 


136 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


is  also  consistency  in  our  actions  when  these  are  in  lite¬ 
ral  conformity  with  our  professions  and  our  promises.  A 
child’s  mind  is  perfectly  and  pitilessly  logical;  its  open, 
candid,  watchful  eye  has  the  virtue  of  Ithuriel’ s  spear  to  un¬ 
mask  falsehood  and  deception.  And,  as  children  are  imita¬ 
tive,  naturally  disposed  to  copy  the  example  of  their  parents, 
if  they  find  these  untruthful,  or  equivocating,  or  artful, — 
they  will  acquire  their  vices  as  speedily  as  they  would  their 
virtues. 

Hence  a  mother  must  be  cautious  and  deliberate, 

CONSISTENT  AND  TRUTHFUL. 

It  is  on  this  latter  quality  alone  that  we  insist  here.  The 
whole  career  of  a  child,  its  fortune  or  misfortune,  its  honor, 
happiness,  misery,  or  disgrace, — all  will  depend  largely,  per¬ 
haps  mainly,  perhaps  altogether,  on  this  one  great  moral 
virtue  of  Truthf  ulness. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  to  this  (ordinarily  speaking), 
that  a  mother  should  never,  in  any  one  instance,  be  known 
to  utter  an  untruth.  Hence  the  horror  which  she  ought  to 
have  herself  of  every  species  of  falsehood,  if  she  would  in¬ 
spire  her  dear  ones  with  a  like  horror,  and  fill  them  with  a 
sincere  love  of  the  truth. 

We  know,  at  this  moment,  a  man  placed  at  the  head  of 
one  of  the  most  flourishing  and  widely-trusted  establish¬ 
ments  in  America,  who  owes  his  rise  from  the  most  ex¬ 
treme  poverty  to  his  present  eminent  position  to  the  strict 
love  of  truth  inculcated  by  his'  mother, — a  poor  washerwo¬ 
man.  As  virtues,  like  vices,  always  travel  in  companies, — - 
the  boy’s  truthfulness  was  only  one  of  the  many  noble 
qualities  which  adorned  him  from  childhood  upward.  His 
open,  ingenuous,  handsome  face,  when  attending  Sunday- 
school  and  preparing  for  his  first  communion,  struck  the 
priest  who  taught  him.  His  threadbare  and  patched,  but 
strictly  neat  garments,  told  their  own  tale  of  home-strug¬ 
gles  and  of  a  poor  mother’s  careful  training.  His  compa- 


THE  MOTHER  MUST  BE  JUST ,  KIND ,  AND  GENTLE.  137 

nions  all  respected  him,  although  by  no  means  the  eldest 
among  them.  A  visit  to  the  mother’s  home,  where  an 
asthmatic  husband  and  four  young  children,  beside  our  lit¬ 
tle  hero,  depended  on  her  labor,  enlisted  in  their  favor  the 
sympathies  of  the  Christian  Doctrine  Society  attached  to 
the  parish  church.  The  family  were  provided  with  work 
which  both  parents  could  attend  to  at  home, — for  the  mo¬ 
ther’s  anger  was  roused  at  the  very  thought  of  aid  from 
charity.  The  oldest,  after  his  first  communion,  was  sent 
to  an  excellent  commercial  school,  where  he  soon  out¬ 
stripped  all  his  companions,  but  won  the  esteem  of  all  by 
his  manliness  and  inflexible  truthfulness  and  honesty. 

From  an  humble  position  as  errand-boy  in  a  merchant’s 
office*  he  became  clerk,  and  rose  steadily  in  the  confidence  of 
his  employer  till  he  became  his  partner  and  right-hand  man. 
During  all  this  time  every  penny  he  earned  was  brought  to 
his  mother,  every  hour  he  could  spare  from  business  was 
spent  with  her  and  the  family.  She  rose  with  him  to  com¬ 
fort  and  then  to  affluence,  and  to  this  day  he  will  have  it 
said,  although  surrounded  by  a  large  family  of  his  own, 
“  that  he  is  living  with  his  mother.”  Her  daughter-in-law 
has  long  learned  to  revere  the  true  nobility  of  soul  of  the 
modest,  quiet,  unassuming  little  woman,  who,  at  the  age  of 
seventy,  is  still,  without  seeming  to  be  so,  the  teacher  and 
idol  of  her  grandchildren,  no  one  of  whom  has  ever  been 
known  to  tell  an  untruth. 

THE  TRUE  MOTHER  MUST  BE  JUST,  KIND,  AND  GENTLE. 

A  quality  akin  to  this  sterling  quality  of  truthfulness,  is 
justice  in  the  mother.  Hot  only  must  she  never  exaggerate 
the  faults  or  imperfections  of  her  children,  but  she  must 
also  impress  them  with  the  conviction  that  she  is  absolutely 
impartial,  never  preferring  one  to  the  other, — at  least  she 
must  so  control  herself  that  neither  by  word  or  action  must 
she  manifest  any  unjust  preference,  or,  indeed,  any  prefer¬ 
ence  at  all. 

There  is  only  one  kind  of  preference  tolerated  in  families, 


138 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


and  that  is  in  favor  of  the  suffering  or  infirm.  It  will  be 
the  duty  of  the  good  mother  to  teach  herself  and  every  one 
of  her  dear  ones  to  lavish  on  the  sick,  the  suffering,  the 
infirm,  their  most  constant,  affectionate,  and  delicate  atten¬ 
tions.  This  is  one  of  the  “  true  charities  ”  of  home-life. 

But  what  is  destructive  of  all  the  “home  charities,”  of 
peace  and  concord  and  happiness  in  every  home  cursed 
with  such  preferences,  are  the  unenviable  beings  known  as 
“  Father’s  Pet”  and  “  Mother’s  Pet.” 

JUSTICE  IN  REWARDING  AND  PUNISHING. 

Let  the  mother  be  also  just  in  rewarding  and  punishing, 
as  well  as  kind  and  gentle  when  she  has  to  reprove  and  cor¬ 
rect.  It  is  wonderful  how  some  women  can  magnetize  chil¬ 
dren,  command  their  attention  and  submission,  make  them 
listen,  obey,  work,  and  do  most  willingly  things  apparently 
the  most  opposite  to  their  inclinations. 

We  have  seen  a  room  full  of  children  in  the  wildest  up¬ 
roar,  defying  the  authority  and  combined  efforts  of  mother 
and  nursery-maids,  hushed  suddenly  into  silence,  order, 
and  quiet  work,  by  the  appearance  of  “  Grandmama,” — the 
very  rustle  of  her  garments  seeming  to  quell  the  noise, 
while  the  bright,  pleasant  look,  and  a  few  words  in  a  sub¬ 
dued  tone,  would  still  the  tempest  as  if  by  some  magic 
spell. 

What  is  the  spell?  Firmness,  gentleness,  kindness, — all 
combining  to  form  that  wonderful  thing  in  man  or  woman 
which  we  call  authority.  We  do  not  mean,  of  course, 
thereby  authority  of  place  or  office, — but  that  authority 
which  attaches  to  “character.”  And  into  this  character 
- — so  irresistible  in  governing  children  or  grown-up  people, 
a  household,  a  nursery,  a  school-room,  or  a  multitude — the 
above  qualities  must  enter.  Add  another, — self-control, — 
and  you  have  a  perfect  mother  and  mistress  of  a  household. 

SELF-CONTROL — IIOW  INDISPENSABLE. 

We  do  not  mean  by  this  term  that  social  self-possession 
or  that  perfect  command  of  the  muscles  of  one’s  countenance 


SELF-CONTROL— HOW  INDISPENSABLE. 


139 


which  our  savages  have  learned  to  perfection.  The  self- 
control  which  is  here  recommended  is  only  one  degree, — and 
that  an  inferior  one, — of  the  Christian  virtue  of  meekness 
beatified  by  our  Lord.  It  is  the  result,  in  persons  naturally 
hot-tempered  and  passionate,  of  habitual  victory  over  self 
and  of  habitual  watchfulness  to  secure  the  fruits  of  victory. 
This  victory  must  be  impressed  on  the  tender  minds  of  youth 
as  most  meritorious  in  the  sight  of  God, — as  one  of  the 
many  characteristics  which  make  the  Christian  man  or 
woman  most  like  to  Christ  himself. 

But  it  will  be  in  vain  for  a  mother  to  preach  it  to  her 
children  if  she  is  not  herself  in  possession  of  it.  Besides, — 
and  this  is  the  important  point, — no  mother  ever  yet  con¬ 
trolled  her  children,  or  taught  them  successfully  the  prac¬ 
tice  of  self-control,  who  did  not  know  how  to  control  her¬ 
self  ;  no  mistress  of  a  household  ever  governed  children  and 
servants,  so  as  to  maintain  order,  discipline,,  obedience,  and 
industry, — who  did  not  show  that  she  could  govern  her 
own  vwds  and  temper, — who  was  not  perfect  mistress  in 
the  house  of  her  own  soul. 

It  is  God’s  will  and  wish  that  every  mother  should  study 
this  self-control,  which  is  only  the  outward  manifestation 
of  that  meekness  and  gentleness  of  spirit,  so  lovely  in  the 
sight  of  God  and  angels.  Ay,  and  most  lovely  is  it  also  in 
the  sight  of  men,  in  the  estimation,  particularly,  of  children 
and  servants,  and  all  persons  dependent  on  us.  And  most 
blessed  is  it,  as  well  as  the  source  of  manifold  blessedness 
to  all  around  us ! 

Children  and  servants  never  ought  to  see  their  mother 
and  mistress  angry,  or  with  the  slightest  sign  of  anger  or 
impatience.  We  once  heard  servants  at  the  death  of  an 
honored  master  affirm,  with  tears  in  their  eyes,  that  they 
had  never  heard  from  his  lips  an  angry  or  a  loud  word. 
This  was  also  the  unanimous  testimony  of  his  children. 
But  on  this  admirable  parent  and  master,  wThat  was  the 
influence  of  his  wife  ?  He  was  by  nature  hot  and  fiery, 
proud  and  imperious  and  resentful.  And  so  was  by  native 
disposition  his  young  wife,  whom  he  wedded  while  yet  in 


140 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


her  teens.  But  she  had  been  trained  in  a  model  home,  and 
by  the  hand  of  a  mother  to  whom  gentleness  was  the  fruit 
of  many  an  early  struggle  with  self. 

The  young  wife,  all  enthusiasm  and  fire  in  her  own  dis¬ 
position,  was  yet  so  gentle  in  her  every  word  and  act,  so 
thoroughly  devoted  to  her  husband,  that  she  soon  made  him 
as  gentle  as  herself  ;  and  after  a  union  of  more  than  thirty 
years,  when  death  separated  them,  it  was  attested  by  ser¬ 
vants,  relatives,  and  acquaintances,— by  the  numberless  vis¬ 
itors  who  loved  to  partake  of  the  hospitalities  of  that  home, 
— that  not  one  angry  word  was  ever  heard  from  parents  to 
children,  or  from  one  child  to  another. 

This  was  the  fruit  of  self-control, — the  blessing  bestowed 
on  gentleness  and  meekness. 

GENTLENESS  NEED  NOT  BE  WEAKNESS. 

There  is  a  natural  softness  which  is  often  mistaken  for 
the  gentleness  we  have  been  describing.  The  former  is  the 
flexibility  of  lead,  which  permits  itself  to  be  bent  in  any 
direction  you  please  ;  the  latter  is  the  elasticity  of  steel 
which  has  passed  again  and  again  through  the  furnace,  and 
has  been  beaten  beneath  the  hammer  till  it  unites  a  proper 
degree  of  flexibility  with  its  well-known  firmness. 

There  are  weak  persons  who  persuade  themselves  that 
firmness  consists  in  unbending  stiffness,  in  a  cold,  harsh, 
cruel  inflexibility,  which  never  knows  how  to  yield.  But 
this  is  not  what  we  mean,  when  we  say  that  the  mother 
ought  in  her  dealings  with  her  children,  in  admonish¬ 
ing,  correcting,  or  punishing  them,  to  be  at  once  firm  and 
gentle. 

We  shall  never  forget  the  passionate  tears  of  a  young 
mother,  when  she  detected  her  boy  in  a  first  falsehood. 
“  Oh !  my  child,  what  have  you  done?”  she  gasped  out, 
with  the  tears  streaming  down  her  cheeks.  “  Told  me  a  lie  ! 
And  don’t  you  know  I  punish  you?”  The  punish¬ 

ment  was  inflicted  by  the  gentle-hearted  mother,  who  wept 
the  while ;  and  it  was  firmly  and  severely  administered. 


WIN  THE  HEARTS  OF  YOUR  CHILDREN 


141 


And  then  the  boy,  worthy  of  such  a  mother,  seeing  her  in¬ 
consolable,  tiew  to  her  arms,  forgetful  of  his  own  pain,  to 
weep  on  her  neck,  as  he  said  :  ‘  ‘  Oh,  mama,  I  am  only 
sorry  I  pained  you  !  Don’t  cry,  dear  mama,  and  I  promise 
never  to  do  so  again.”  And  the  promise  was  kept. 

NEVER  CORRECT  OR  PUNISH  IN  A  PASSION. 

One  golden  rule  should  be  ever  kept  in  mind  by  mothers, 
— indeed  by  all  persons  charged  with  the  training  or  correc¬ 
tion  of  others, — never  to  administer  reproof,  correction,  or 
punishment  when  under  the  influence  of  passion  or  emo¬ 
tion. 

If  you  would  not  lose  the  respect  of  your  children,  your 
authority  and  influence  over  them, — wait  till  you  are  per¬ 
fectly  calm  to  speak  to  them  or  to  chastise  them.  Of  course, 
the  heartfelt  grief  of  the  young  mother  just  mentioned  went 
still  further,  and  made  a  far  deeper  impression  on  her  child. 

WIN  THE  HEARTS  OF  YOUR  CHILDREN. 

It  is  a  capital  mistake  made  by  parents, — and  a  fatal  mis¬ 
take,  when  one  looks  at  its  dreadful  consequences, — to  think 
that  they  can  rely  on  the  natural  affection  which  their  chil¬ 
dren  bear  them,  and  thus  make  no  effort  and  use  no  indus¬ 
try  to  win  their  love. 

To  be  sure,  nature  has  laid  up  in  the  heart  of  the  child  a 
deep  store  of  affection,  gratitude,  and  reverence  for  the  dear 
authors  of  its  earthly  being.  And  it  may  take  many  years 
of  neglect,  or  harshness,  or  even  downright  cruelty,  to  ex¬ 
haust  that  store,  to  kill  that  deep  and  strong  root  of  filial 
love  in  the  soul.  But  experience  daily  shows  that  the  store 
is  not  exhaustless,  and  that  the  most  robust  root  of  love 
and  reverence  can  be  killed. 

There  are  mothers  to  whom  their  children  are  a  burden, 
who  bestow  on  them  only  a  few  rare  moments  of  the  time 
they  devote  to  vanity  or  dissipation,  who  grudge  them  the 
few  crumbs  of  affection  with  which  they  fondly  imagine 


142 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


they  can  feed  the  hungry  hearts  of  their  babes,  who  leave 
the  little  unfortunates  to  the  chance  tenderness  of  strangers  ; 
and  yet  these  mothers  will  expect  love  from  their  grown-up 
sons  and  daughters !  These  are  unnatural  mothers,  however, 
who  are  a  curse  to  their  children,  and  to  whom,  in  turn,  by 
an  inevitable  retribution,  their  children  will  prove  a  curse. 
It  is  not  with  them  we  are  concerned :  they  will  not  be 
taught  or  reformed  ;  so,  they  will  go  down  the  steep  and  slip¬ 
pery  slope  on  which  the  heartless  move  to  perdition !  We 
are  addressing  ourselves  to  parents  who  think  they  love 
their  offspring,  or  who  do  really  love  them,  but  who  err  ‘ 
most  fatally  in  their  way  of  showing  it,  and  who  may  be 
still  open  to  instruction. 

There  are  parents, — all  too  numerous  in  every  class  of  so¬ 
ciety,  — who  never  seem  to  think  that  they  need  gentleness, 
kindness,  loving  words  and  ways,  in  dealing  with  children. 
It  is  not  ouly  fathers  among  the  laboring  and  hard  worked 
classes,  who  usually  address  both  girls  and  boys  with  loud 
and  angry  words,  with  a  curse,  or  an  oath,  or  a  vile  epithet, 
or  a  blow  ;  this  is  but  two  frequently  the  treatment  which 
mothers  have  recourse  to. 

Can  such  unchristian  parents  expect  either  affection  or 
reverence  from  these  boys  and  girls,  even  before  they  have 
grown  up  to  manhood  and  womanhood?  We  touch  here 
upon  one  of  the  inveterate  sores  of  domestic  education 
among  our  laboring  population,  and  would  fain  say  more  on 
the  visible  fruits  of  such  training.  But,  for  the  present  at 
least,  we  must  content  us  with  sketching  the  portrait  of  a 
motherly  love  indefatigable  in  its  endeavors  and  admirable 
in  its  methods  of  securing  and  increasing  continually  the 
grateful  love  of  children. 

Of  the  importance  and  necessity  of  binding  her  children 
to  herself  by  the  ties  of  the  strongest  affection,  surely  every 
true  mother  must  be  convinced.  Not  only  her  own  happi¬ 
ness  through  life,  but  the  temporal  and  eternal  welfare  of 
her  children,  depends  chiefly,  generally,  not  to  say  almost 
universally,  on  the  influence  which  a  noble  mother  can  wield 


WIN  THE  HEARTS  OF  TOUR  CHILDREN. 


143 


over  the  mind  and  heart  and  the  whole  conduct  of  her  dear 
ones.  And  there  is  not  one  woman  who  reads  this  page, 
but  can  and  ought  to  be  such  a  noble  mother ! 

It  is  her  duty  and  her  interest.  But  how  is  this  to  be 
done  ?  W omen  can  teach  themselves  these  methods  far 
better  than  any  man  can  teach  them.  They  know  how  con¬ 
tagious  love  is, — how  resistless  it  is  where  it  is  ardently  and 
constantly  shown  to  those  who  may  and  ought  to  return  it. 
The  wisest  and  strongest  are  made  foolish  and  weak  by  the 
show  of  a  sincere,  ardent,  but  unlawful  affection.  But, 
where  God  commands  us  to  love,  and  to  love  tenderly,  con¬ 
stantly,  and  unweariedly,  and  where — as  we  have  seen 
above — He  co-operates  with  us  in  our  labor  of  love,  how  can 
we  not  make  sure  of  a  certain  and  a  rich  return  \  Your 
love,  O  mothers,  is  as  natural,  as  necessary,  to  the  life  of 
your  children’s  souls,  and  to  the  health  of  their  lives,  as 
the  sun’ s  light  and  warmth  are  to  the  growth  of  the  grass 
on  the  meadow  or  to  the  ripening  of  the  corn  in  the  held. 
And  your  children  are  as  certain  to  grow  and  ripen  in  per¬ 
fect  and  lasting  love  for  you, — the  dearest  and  best  objects 
ever  given  man  to  love, — as  the  grass  and  the  corn  to  pros¬ 
per  in  the  sunlight  and  the  warm  air. 

You  have  flowers  in  your  garden,  in  your  greenhouse,  or 
in  your  room.  There  are  among  them  some  favorites  which 
you  wish  no  hand  but  your  own  to  tend.  You  have  studied 
their  nature,  their  habits,  what  can  help  them  or  what  can 
hurt  and  kill  them.  You  know  the  kind  of  soil  which  suits 
them,  and  the  quantity  of  moisture  and  warmth  each  needs. 
There  is  a  sort  of  love  in  the  care  which  one  bestows  on 
beautiful  plants  and  flowers.  And  to  this  care,  this  intelli¬ 
gent  and  loving  culture,  these  beautiful  creatures  respond 
by  healthful  growth  and  a  more  brilliant  bloom. 

Would  that  many  mothers  would  bestow  on  cultivating 
the  hearts  of  their  dear  ones  the  care,  the  study,  the  intel¬ 
ligence,  the  tenderness, — we  had  almost  said  the  love, — 
whicli  they  devoted  to  the  favorites  of  greenhouse  or  gar¬ 
den  !  A  mother’s  loving  eye  is,  daily  and  hourly,  more  to 
the  growth  and  health  of  the  noblest  affections  in  the  dear 


144 


TEE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


souls  committed  to  her,  than  the  great  sun  in  the  heavens  is 
to  the  life  of  forest  or  field ;  her  sweet  words  of  praise,  of 
encouragement,  of  correction,  descend,  like  the  rain  and 
the  dew,  into  the  inmost  sources  of  life  in  the  heart,  stirring 
up  therein  and  fostering  into  bloom  the  germs  of  every 
manly  virtue  and  noble  womanly  affection.  See  how  each 
tree  in  the  great  virgin  forest  will  send  its  trunk  straight 
upward  toward  the  sunlight  and  the  warmth,  and  how  its 
branches  stretch  upward  toward  the  sky  to  catch  the  rain¬ 
drops  by  day  and  the  dews  of  night ! 

Are  you  not,  in  the  midst  of  your  dear  ones,  the  sunlight 
and  warmth  of  their  home  and  their  souls?  And  do  not 
these  souls  continually  open  their  bosoms  and  reach  out  to 
you  with  unceasing  hunger  and  thirst  for  the  rain  of  your 
instruction  and  the  cool,  refreshing  dew  of  your  love  ? 
Why  are  you  so  sparing  of  what  does  not  impoverish  you, 
and  what  is  sure  to  bring  you  a  harvest  of  immortal  grati¬ 
tude  and  happiness  ? 

But,  leave  we  to  the  next  chapter  the  many  other  most 
interesting  things  which  yet  remain  to  be  said  about  the 
mother’s  duties,  as  well  as  the  magnificent  examples  which 
illustrate  woman’ s  husbandry  in  cultivating  the  souls  of  her 
children. 


CHAPTER  X. 


THE  MOTHER’S  OFFICE  TOWARD  CHILDHOOD. 

Oh  !  the  joy 

Of  young  ideas,  painted  upon  the  mind 
In  the  warm  glowing  colors  fancy  spreads 
On  objects  not  yet  known  ;  when  all  is  new 
And  all  is  lovely  :  he  looks  around,  and  lo  ! 

As  if  returned  to  Eden  bowers,  every  thing 
Is  very  good. 

You  know  the  manners  of  hoys,  the  characteristics  of  children— that  these 
are  innocence,  simplicity,  purity,  truth,  and  humility.  They  have  no  passion 
they  need  blush  for,  no  ambition,  no  care  for  riches,  no  anxious  solicitudes, 
neither  malice,  nor  fraud,  nor  suspicion,  nor  hatred.  .  .  .  All  is  pure,  so  that 
the  very  word  boy,  or  puer  (in  Latin),  is  derived  from  purity.  O  happy  state 
of  boys  !  O  golden  age  of  children  !  Add  intelligence,  and  what  will  be  want¬ 
ing  to  make  them  angels  ?  For  in  both  are  the  same  beauty,  the  same  counte¬ 
nance,  the  same  native  joyousness.  0  how  often,  when  I  see  them  passing  by, 
do  I  wish  that  they  might  grow  in  intelligence  and  not  in  stature  !  Truly  it 
would  be  good  for  them  to  continue  thus  until  Christ  shall  come.  — St.  Thomas 
VlLLANOVA. 

Assuredly  if  Christian  mothers  make  it  the  chief  purpose 
of  their  life  to  be  supernatural  in  their  own  interior,  and 
in  all  their  motives,  actions,  and  methods, — they  will  only 
have  to  labor  with  the  divine  assistance,  “to  add  intelli¬ 
gence”  to  all  the  treasures  of  mind  and  heart  bestowed 
upon  their  babes  by  nature,  increased  and  hallowed  in  such 
a  wondrous  way  by  Baptism, — and  nothing  “will  be  wanting 
to  make  them  angels.”  Xay,  if  they  cultivate  in  them  the 
“gifts  of  the  Holy  Ghost,”  bestowed  in  an  inferior  degree 
in  Baptism  and  in  their  fullness  in  Confirmation,  they  will 
grow  in  that  understanding  which  is  all  divine  in  its  objects 
10  145 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


146 

and  the  light  it  pours  on  all  things,  without  ceasing  to  grow 
“  in  stature.”  Such  mothers,  by  the  careful  and  loving  cul¬ 
ture  of  the  pure  souls  confided  to  them,  will  omit  nothing 
that  is  “  wanting  to  make  them  angels  ;”  and  as  the  result 
of  such  training  many  will  continue  angels  “  until  Christ 
shall  come.” 

We  have  some  of  these  angelic  men  and  women  before 
our  mind’s  eye  now, — watched  over  in  childhood,  as  if  they 
were  incarnate  spirits  intrusted  to  the  mother’s  care,  to  be 
trained  in  all  the  perfection  of  manhood  and  womanhood 
while  preserving  all  the  glorious  characteristics  of  their 
angel-nature ;  they  grew  up  in  the  spiritual  beauty  and 
spotless  innocence  of  their  baptism,  unfolding  in  mind  and 
heart  these  priceless  “ gifts”  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  just  as 
they  developed  all  the  exterior  graces  and  loveliness  of  their 
human  character ;  and  so  they  continued  till  Christ  came 
to  summon  them  away, — all  too  early,  the  world  thought, — 
from  the  society  which  so  much  needed  the  light  of  their 
examples. 

THE  DIVIXE  REALITY  IN  CHILDHOOD. 

Once  more,  let  us  see  in  the  baptized  babe  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  mother  what  God  sees  in  it :  let  the  same  sublime  con¬ 
ception  of  the  child’ s  position  and  destinies  which  is  in  the 
Divine  Mind  be  also  in  the  mind  of  the  parent.  Just  as  a 
savage,  ignorant  of  the  value  of  gems  or  the  precious  metals, 
will  prefer  brilliant-colored  glass  beads  to  the  diamonds  of 
Brazil,  the  emeralds  of  Hew  Grenada,  or  the  pearls  of  Coro¬ 
mandel,  even  so  will  it  be  with  the  mother  who  forgets  or 
ignores  what  is  the  divine  destiny  of  her  babe,  what  price 
Christ  has  paid  on  the  cross  to  lift  it  up  to  his  own  level,  and 
what  capacities  are  in  that  young  soul  for  the  most  godlike 
virtues  and  goodness. 

In  the  child  brought  back  from  the  baptismal  font  to 
the  mother’ s  arms,  there  is  the  human  being  with  the  fallen 
nature  inherited  from  Adam,  but  redeemed  and  restored  in 
Christ,  and  there  is  also  the  godlike  being  created  anew  in 


THE  DIVINE  REALITY  IN  CHILDHOOD. 


147 


baptism  in  the  likeness  of  its  Divine  Parent.  In  spite  of 
the  sacrament  of  the  second  birth  and  the  grace  of  elevation 
with  all  its  attendant  gifts  and  aids, — there  remains  in  the 
child  the  wound  left  by  the  primeval  transgression  :  our  in¬ 
clinations  are  downward,  and  they  have  to  be  resisted,  to 
be  overcome,  mortified  and  deadened,  if  we  would  rise  to  the 
glorious  heights  of  Christian  heroism  and  godliness,  which 
belong  to  the  angelic  and  heavenly  nature  we  have  put  bn 
in  Christ. 

Thus,  the  mother  has  to  watch  over  the  manifestation  of 
the  evil  dispositions  which  early  peep  out  in  the  child,  and 
tend  to  drag  it  down,  because  they  are  the  inclinations  of 
flesh  and  blood,  and  are  of  earth,  earthly.  These  have  to 
be  combated,  counteracted,  immediately  and  unceasingly, 
from  their  first  appearance  in  infancy  and  childhood,  if  the 
mother  would  not  see  them  shoot  up  in  boyhood  and  girl¬ 
hood,  overtopping  and  choking  the  growth  of  every  super¬ 
natural,  or  even  natural,  virtue. 

It  would  be  a  fatal  neglect, — one,  in  all  likelihood,  irre¬ 
parable, — to  allow  the  babe  to  have  its  own  way  in  every 
thing.  Wise  mothers  are  careful  to  check  the  temper  of 
their  youngest  infants,  and  they  do  succeed  in  making  them 
acquire  even  then  habits  which  ever  after  grow  with  their 
growth. 

Even  pagans  looked  upon  the  soul  of  the  child  as  a  some¬ 
thing  so  mysterious,  so  deep,  and  so  holy, — as  if  a  divine 
being  tenanted  the  little  helpless  body, — that  they  would 
have  their  babes  treated  with  infinite  reverence.  We  Chris¬ 
tians  know  clearly  what  mighty  spirit  dwells  within  that 
regenerated  soul ;  and  we  may  divine  somewhat  of  the 
workings  and  promptings  of  the  Paraclete  in  His  living 
tabernacle.  Who  of  us,  who  has  roamed  in  boyhood  or 
early  manhood  through  the  solitudes  of  our  great  virgin 
forests,  but  has  come  unexpectedly  upon  a  lovely  little 
lake, — the  parent  spring  of  some  lordly  river, — nestling  in 
a  secluded  valley,  with  the  great  trees  along  its  margin 
sending  their  roots  down  to  drink  of  the  pure  waters,  that 
margin  itself  fringed  all  around  with  wild  flowers, — while 


148 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


the  calm  mirror-like  bosom  reflected  the  blue  skies  above, 
with  their  white  or  golden  clouds,  and  the  mighty  hills 
which  stood  sentinels  around  to  protect  from  intrusion  or 
profanation  all  the  sanctities  of  the  place  ? 

It  is  not  a  mere  reflection  of  the  heavens,  or  an  image  of 
the  eternal  hills  that  the  attentive  and  wondering  mind  can 
see  within  the  pure  passionless  depths  of  the  soul  of  in¬ 
fancy  or  childhood.  We  know  that  the  God  of  that  great 
temple  we  call  the  universe,  the  Spirit  Creator  and  Sanc¬ 
tifier,  is  there  himself  in  person.  What  is  the  nature  of 
his  working  within  these  mysterious  depths  of  the  child- 
soul  %  What  foundations  of  mighty  things  to  come  is  his 
hand  laying  beneath  the  untroubled  surface  of  that  life  in 
its  well-spring  ? 

Mothers, — the  educated,  the  wealthy,  the  God-fearing, — 
would  do  wisely  to  ask  themselves  such  questions  as  these, 
— when  they  gaze  into  the  upturned  face  of  their  babe,  and 
look  down  into  these  deep  and  fearless  eyes,  through  which 
a  glimpse  is  had  of  the  mysterious  infant  world  of  thought 
and  feeling  within. 

“  Children  in  their  tabernacle  know  the  secrets,  not  of 
cities,  not  of  human  society,  not  of  history,  but  of  God — 
their  fair  eyes  are  full  of  infinite  sweetness — their  little 
hands,  joyous  and  blessed,  have  not  committed  evil — their 
young  feet  have  never  touched  our  defilement — their  sacred 
heads  wear  an  aureole  of  light — their  smile,  their  voice, 
proclaim  their  twofold  purity.  O  the  paradisaical  igno¬ 
rance,  coveted,  perhaps,  by  angels,  of  all  the  errors  which 
heresy  has  sown  in  later  times  !  What  cruelty  to  intercept 
the  view  of  children  by  suffering  their  feet  to  get  entangled 
in  such  briars,  and  their  minds  to  be  thus  cankered,  as  is 
the  bud  bit  with  an  envious  worm,  ere  he  can  spread  his 
sweet  leaves  to  the  air,  or  dedicate  his  beauty  to  the  sun ! 
Later  they  will  not  thank  you  ;  far  happier  had  it  sufficed 
them  to  have  known  good  by  itself,  and  evil  not  at  all !  As 
terns  and  other  birds  from  arctic  solitudes,  when  found 
flapping  their  long,  silver,  tapering  wings  over  our  rivers 
that  wind  through  woodlands  and  rich  yellow  meadows, 


THE  MIND  OF  CHILDHOOD. 


149 


show  no  fear  of  man,  but  keep  close  hovering  over  the 
clowns  who  with  stones  and  staves  assail  them,  so  these 
innocent  souls,  coming  first  amid  the  crowded  haunts  of  life, 
are  ignorant  of  evil,  and  of  all  dangers  unsuspicious.”  * 

THE  MIND  OF  CHILDHOOD. 

What  seeds  of  salutary  truth  should  the  mother  sow  in 
this  virgin  soil,  in  order  that  its  first  vital  vigor  be  given  to 
the  growth  of  immortal  and  divine  fruits  ?  What  was  said, 
in  the  preceding  chapter,  to  illustrate  the  supernatural 
teaching  of  a  Christian  parent,  has,  in  a  great  measure, 
anticipated  our  answer  to  this  question.  Here,  however, 
we  have  to  descend  to  particulars. 

“  I  remember,”  says  Marina  de  Escobar,  “  that  when  I 
was  a  little  girl,  and  did  not  know  what  was  meant  by  men¬ 
tal  prayer,  I  used  to  consider  with  great  emotion  the  mys¬ 
teries  of  the  life  of  Christ.” 

A  young  mother — we  have  the  story  from  her  own  lips, 
of  the  blessed  result  of  her  early  husbandry,  others  as  well 
have  been  the  witnesses — a  very  young  mother,  reared  in 
her  own  honored  home  in  the  paradisaical  innocence  de¬ 
scribed  above,  once  reasoned  with  herself  as  she  looked 
down  on  the  face  of  her  infant  daughter,  her  first  child, 
lying  on  the  rapt  parent’ s  knees  :  ‘  ‘  Here  I  have  in  this  sweet 
soul  more  than  a  precious  piece  of  marble  to  fashion  into 
‘some  glorious  shape.  What  form  can  I  give  it  now,  which 
shall  last  for  all  time  %  With  what  sentiments  can  I  imbue 
my  darling  which  can  best  insure  her  happiness  and  ever¬ 
lasting  worth  %  What  should  I  have  wished  my  mother  to 
implant  in  my  own  soul  as  the  principle  of  a  goodness  and 
a  felicity  superior  to  all  that  mind  can  think  of  or  heart 
desire?”  And  like  a  sudden  flash  of  lightning  amid  the 
darkness,  or  a  distinctly  audible  voice  in  a  vast  solitude, 
an  interior  answer  came,  The  Love  of  God  !  Convinced  that 
this  was  the  response  to  the  deepest  wish  of  her  heart,  the 
young  mother  thenceforward  set  about  watching  for  every 


*  Compitum,  b.  i.,  c.  2,  p.  31. 


150 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


sign  of  dawning  intelligence  in  lier  babe,  in  order  to  make 
the  notion  of  him  the  first  light  which  should  enter  there, 
and  his  name  the  first  word  uttered  by  the  infant  lips. 
Thus,  from  the  first  month  after  the  birth  of  that  heaven¬ 
sent  child,  its  fond  parent  would  hang  over  it  murmuring 
into  its  ears  the  fond  wish  that  God  should  be  first  and  last 
in  its  mind  and  heart,  and  that  his  love  should  be  the  light 
of  its  life  evermore. 

The  Adorable  Name,  so  far  as  mother’s  skill  could  effect 
it,  was  indeed  stamped  upon  the  child’s  soul.  She  was 
taught  to  thank  Him  for  the  motherly  love  which  sur¬ 
rounded  her  with  an  enchanted  world,  as  well  as  for  the 
father’s  doting  fondness  and  all  the  comforts  of  home. 
There  was  not  a  beautiful  thing, — and  the  child’s  home  was 
filled  with  such,— in  house,  or  in  garden  and  field,  that  she 
was  not  made  to  look  upon  as  a  gift  from  that  Love  which 
never  wearies  in  giving,  but  whose  lavish  hand  ever  makes 
of  the  treasures  poured  out  to-day  the  sure  pledge  of  to¬ 
morrow’s  surpassing  magnificence. 

And  thus  was  implanted  in  her  little  heart  the  early 
idea  of 

GENEROSITY. 

For  childhood  is  open  to  the  notion  of  a  Goodness  which 
only  measures  its  own  gifts  op  the  gratitude  with  which  the 
receiver  acknowledges  them,  and  the  generosity  with  which 
the  fitting  return  is  made.  And  so  the  generous  love  of  the 
Divine  Benefactor  waxed  stronger  and  stronger  in  the  child, 
in  the  girl,  in  the  accomplished  maiden  who  was  the  soul  of 
every  great  and  good  work  gotten  up  around  her  in  favor  of 
the  poor  and  the  suffering,  till  the  close  of  her  brief  life  of 
unsparing  and  self-sacrificing  goodness. 

At  the  age  of  three,  necessity  compelled  a  temporary 
separation  from  her  mother  and  her  home.  But  so  firmly 
had  the  little  heart  been  molded  to  generous  self-control 
and  abnegation  even  then,  that  she  feigned  joyousness  as 
she  bade  farewell  to  father  and  mother  on  the  deck  of  the 
steamer,  and  once  they  were  out  of  sight  burst  into  an 


GENEROSITY. 


151 


agony  of  tears.  To  her  uncle’s  remonstrances  the  child 
could  only  reply,  “Oh!  I  did  not  want  to  distress  dear 
mama  !  ”  It  was  the  same  generosity  which  impelled  her, 
when  a  wife  and  mother,  to  tear  herself  away  from  her  wor¬ 
shiped  parents,  and  cast  her  lot  with  her  husband  in  a  God¬ 
forsaken  land.  Though  her  young  heart  was  breaking,  she 
would  cheer  all  her  dear  ones  as  they  clung  around  her  at 
parting.  In  her  new  home,  she  felt  called  on  to  stir  up  in 
every  soul  brought  within  reach  of  her  influence  the  zeal  for 
God’ s  name  dishonored  and  for  religion  betrayed  and  dese¬ 
crated  and  trampled  upon, — filling  every  home  far  and  wide 
with  the  piety  which  burned  so  brightly  in  her  own.  And, 
crushed  down  by  the  death  of  her  father,  and  prostrate  on  a 
bed  of  sickness,  she  no  sooner  learned  that  yellow  fever  had 
attacked  her  servants,  than  she  found  strength  to  rise  and 
tend  herself  the  plague-stricken, — giving  her  life  to  the  God 
of  charity,  and  commending  with  her  dying  breath  to  his 
fatherly  care  her  babes,  her  disconsolate  husband,  and  the 
doting  and  thrice -afflicted  mother  thousands  of  miles  away. 

While  the  public  was  praising  all  the  nobleness  of  a  life 
thus  sacrificed,  the  poor  mother  at  home  bethought  her 
suddenly  of  the  early  inspiration  to  fill  that  soul  with  the 
love  of  God  and  to  make  of  the  existence  of  her  child  one 
continuous  act  of  generosity.  In  looking  back  upon  the 
past  she  saw  clearly  the  divine  purpose, — and  like  the 
Mother  of  Sorrows  on  Calvary,  she  sought  comfort  and 
strength  in  taking  to  her  heart  the  Crucified. 

And  so  was  fulfilled  in  one  near  our  doors  what  a  noble 
Spanish  author  said  of  himself  long  ago  when  commenting 
the  following  text  of  Proverbs :  I  lorn  them  that  lorn  me : 
and  they  that  in  the  morning  early  watch  for  me  shall  find 
me.  (Proverbs  viii.  17.)  “In  the  house  of  all  other  princes,” 
Guevara  says,  “it  is  the  custom  never  to  open  to  early 
visitors,  but  persons  must  come  after  noon  ;  whereas  this 
passage  shows  us  that  those  who  would  transact  business 
with  Christ,  should  repair  to  him  at  the  dawn  of  their  ex¬ 
istence,  and  seek  him  from  their  birth.  O  my  God,  my 
God,  I  confess  it  is  true.  ‘  I  do  not  watch  for  thee  from  the 


152 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


dawn  ; 5  but  on  the  other  hand,  Lord,  thou  wilt  not  deny 
that  I  have  been  from  my  birth  a  Christian,  and  that  ever 
since  I  have  had  any  memory,  I  have  named  myself  always 
thine.”  * 

Yes, — we  all  love  what  is  freshest  and  earliest  in  nature; 
we  love  the  first  flowers  of  the  spring  and  the  first  tender 
bloom  of  spring  itself  as  it  spreads  over  forest  and  field  ; 
and  there  are  those, — the  souls  most  sensitive  to  what  is 
lovely  and  beautiful, — who  are  filled  with  rapture  by  the 
first  glories  of  dawn,  the  awakening  of  the  great  heart 
of  nature  to  renewed  life  and  joy  at  the  approach  of  the 
glorious  sun,  and  the  first  fragrance  of  the  dewy  meads  and 
gardens  as  they  scent  the  air  with  their  first  fresh  odors,  and 
the  first  voices  of  the  grove  as  they  burst  into  a  full  concert 
when  Light,  God’s  great  representative  in  the  firmaments, 
begins  to  shine  above  the  eastern  hills.  Pious  souls  love  to 
give  to  God  the  first  and  freshest  of  all  things,  the  first 
hours  of  the  day,  as  well  as  the  first  dawn  of  their  affec¬ 
tions. 

And  does  He,  who  made  the  human  soul,  set  no  store  on 
what  is  most  lovely  and  precious  in  our  own  existence, — • 
the  first  thoughts  of  the  infant  mind  at  its  dawn,  the  first 
love  of  the  sweet  and  innocent  heart  of  childhood  1  O 
mothers !  make  sure  that  these  are  consecrated  to  Him, — 
and  be  certain,  on  your  part,  that  what  God  can  bestow  of 
choicest  graces  shall  be  given  you  and  yours  in  return. 

We  only  pray  that  every  mother  who,  while  she  reads 
these  lines,  has  such  a  little  daughter  as  the  one  dedicated 
so  early  to  divine  love,  may  teach  her  child  to  emulate  her¬ 
self  in  the  early  paths  of  piety  and  generosity.  How  sweet 
will  it  be  to  be  able  to  say  in  after  life  : 

“  She  was  all  I  had 

To  love  in  human  life — this  playmate  sweet, 

This  child  of  seven  years  old — so  she  was  made 
My  sole  associate,  and  her  willing  feet 
Wandered  with  mine.” 


*  Antonio  de  Guevara,  Epist. ,  1.  ii. 


JOYOUSNESS  AND  LOVE  OF  ENJOYMENT. 


158 


JOYOUSNESS  AND  LOVE  OE  ENJOYMENT. 

Most  important  is  it  not  to  check  in  childhood  the  mani¬ 
festations  of  its  joyous  spirit  which  is  ever  ready  to  break 
forth  as  naturally  as  the  brook  runs  sparkling  in  the  sun¬ 
light  and  singing  down  its  pebbly  bed.  This  joyousness 
comes  from  the  unconsciousness  of  wrong,  the  freedom  from 
all  care,  and  the  perfect  delight  the  little  innocents  find  in 
all  that  is  good  and  beautiful  around  them.  To  their  sin¬ 
less  eyes  all  is  bright  and  sunny,  all  is  new  and  lovely,  and 
as  the  garden  of  Paradise  appeared  to  Adam  and  Eve  inno¬ 
cent,  so  to  these  “  every  thing  is  very  good.” 

Even  when  a  little  boisterous,  it  is  well  to  let  the  current 
flow.  Bo  not  restrain  it  or  dam  it  up  so  near  its  source. 
Alas,  the  sweet  years  through  which  it  lasts  will  have  passed 
away  all  too  soon.  We  have  only  to  look  back  to  the  inter¬ 
val  between  our  own  happy  and  headlong  childhood,  and 
the  cares  and  sorrows  which  settled  so  darkly  on  our  early 
youth,  and  we  shall  be  convinced  that  our  too  brief  early 
happiness  or  joyousness  of  spirit  was  but  too  like  the  crys¬ 
tal  stream  from,  the  sierra,  rushing  down  from  its  source  in 
the  uplands,  with  the  early  dawn,  filling  its  bed  with  the 
clear,  bounding  waters,  and  becoming  at  noontide  a  fillet  of 
sluggish,  muddy  water  amid  a  waste  of  barren  sand. 

Encourage  this  bright  spirit  in  your  child  ;  let  its  soul 
sing  with  all  its  strength  while  it  may.  Even  the  song  of 
the  nightingale  ends  long  before  the  summer  ;  and  there 
will  be  a  long,  long  season  when  not  one  note  of  love  or 
praise  will  resound  through  the  joyless  grove  and  forest. 

The  keen  zest  for  enjoyment  must  also  be  encouraged  and 
directed.  Children  only  see  what  is  good,  beautiful,  and 
lovely  in  God’s  blessed  world, — that  is,  the  children  who  are 
not  cooped  up  between  narrow  and  dark  walls,  and  com¬ 
pelled  to  experience  no  necessities  or  no  pleasures,  but  those 
of  satisfying  the  craving  for  food,  warmth,  and  sleep.  They 
are  the  disinherited  in  God’s  rich  and  pleasant  world  ;  and 
it  would  be  in  vain  to  dwell  at  length  here  on  the  means  of 


154 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


giving  light  and  air  and  nourishment  to  these  poor  little 
starved  buds  of  humanity. 

We  are  speaking  of  children  within  whose  reach  are  the 
usual  sources  of  enjoyment.  It  is  a  blessed  privilege  for 
the  mother  to  minister  in  every  way  she  can  to  the  delight 
and  amusement  of  her  dear  ones.  And  one  of  the  most 
beneficial  industries  of  motherhood  is  to  provide  all  manner 
of  sport  and  recreation  for  her  children  at  home,  and  to  see 
to  it  that  they  feast  their  senses  on  garden  and  field  and 
park  and  forest  as  often  as  possible. 

We  are  not  of  those  who  are  enamored  with  the  modern 
methods  of  placing  primers  of  natural  history  in  the  hands 
of  children  as  soon  as  they  are  able  to  read  words  of  one  or 
two  syllables.  The  love  of  nature  and  of  all  its  exhaustless 
stores  of  beauty  and  grandeur  and  sublimity  does  not  come 
to  the  human  soul  in  this  way.  And,  besides,  wTe  know 
that  the  new-fangled  science  which  would  make  nature  first 
and  middlemost  and  last,  is  not  the  science  that  cares  to  set 
God  before  the  mind  of  youth,  either  last  or  first  or  middle¬ 
most. 

But  you  who  believe  that,  without  God,  life  would  be  a 
bitter  road,  ending  nowhere,  and  this  world  a  mad-house 
with  a  drunken  manager,  and  man  himself  the  most  terrible 
of  wild  beasts, — you  will' know  how  to  make  the  spirit  of 
your  children  joyous  by  teaching  them  that  the  life  of 
heaven  is  joy  without  end,  and  that  all  the  beautiful  things 
with  which  their  Maker  has  surrounded  them  in  the  firma¬ 
ment  above  and  all  over  this  wondrous  earth, — are  only  faint 
images  of  the  beauties  with  which  the  infinite  magnificence 
has  decked  out  his  and  our  eternal  home. 

Most  true  is  it, — and  how  the  grateful  soul  swells  in 
dwelling  on  it ! — that  this  visible  universe,  and  this  most 
beautiful  earth  in  the  midst  of  it,  are,  with  all  their  untold 
and  incomprehensible  splendors,  but  the  tent  set  up  by  the 
emigrant  to  shelter  himself  and  his  dear  ones  for  the  night 
on  their  homeward  way.  There  may  be  in  its  furniture  a 
few  ornaments,  one  or  two  beautiful  things,  faint  souvenirs 
of  home  ;  but  they  are  at  best  but  reminders  of  the  wealth 


JO  YOU  SNESS  AND  LOVE  OF  ENJOYMENT. 


155 


and  glory  of  the  resting-place  and  permanent  abode  to 
which  the  travelers  are  journeying. 

So  beware  of  these  new  teachers  and  the  bitter  fruit  of 
science  which  they  would  give  you  and  yours.  Teach  these 
early  to  find  all  joy  and  delight  in  thinking  of  Him  who  is 
the  measureless  ocean  of  perfection  and  beauty  and  bless¬ 
edness.  The  old  Catholic  feeling  is  expressed  by  St.  Francis 
of  Assisi  in  his  canticles  of  divine  love  : 

“  Heaven  and  earth  with  one  accord 
Are  ever  crying  out  to  me  : 

*  With  all  thy  heart,  oh  love  the  Lord, 

For  he  created  us  that  we 
Might  draw  thy  spirit  heavenward. 

To  love  Him  who  hath  so  loved  thee.* 

Lo  !  what  abundant  beams 
Of  goodness  all  benign 
Flow  from  that  light  Divine 
In  never-failing  streams  !  ”  * 

Or,  if  you  would  like  a  sweet  singer  nearer  to  your  home 
and  times,  the  following  sentiment  will  find  an  echo  in 
many  a  soul  grown  old  with  care  and  burdened  with  the 
regret  of  graces  lost  and  opportunities  thrown  away  : 

“My  mother’s  voice  !  how  often  creep 
Its  accents  on  my  lonely  hours, 

Like  healing  sent  on  wings  of  sleep. 

Or  dew  to  the  unconcious  flowers  I 
I  can  forget  her  melting  prayer 
While  leaping  pulses  madly  fly. 

But  in  the  still  unbroken  air 

Her  gentle  tones  come  stealing  by. 

And  years  and  sin  and  folly  flee. 

And  leave  me  at  my  mother’s  knee.  . 

The  evening  hours,  the  birds,  the  flowers. 

The  starlight,  moonlight, — all  that’s  meet 
For  heaven  in  this  lost  world  of  ours, — 

Remind  me  of  her  teachings  sweet. 

My  heart  is  harder,  and  perhaps 

My  thoughtlessness  hath  drunk  up  tears  ; 


*  Translation  from  “  The  Month  and  Catholic  Review”  for  October,  1877. 


156 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


And  there’s  a  mildew  in  the  lapse 
Of  a  few  swift  and  checkered  years — 

But  Nature’s  book  is,  even  yet, 

With  all  a  mother’s  lessons  writ.” 

Be  not  afraid  of  the  book  of  nature,  so  long  as  you  have 
your  Catholic  faith  to  enable  you  to  read  it  aright,  nor  of 
the  voice  of  poetry,  so  long  as  it  sings  to  such  a  true  tone 
as  this. 

But,  O  mother, — whether  you  live  in  a  palace  or  in  a 
hovel, — if  your  chief  care  be  to  have  God  ever  live  in 
your  heart,  his  light  within  you  will  shed  such  unearthly 
beauty  on  all  things  that  you  will  make  your  little  ones  see 
a  fairy  palace  in  this  world,  in  spite  of  your  own  poverty 
and  your  life  of  hard  labor.  So,  keep  that  light  ever  full 
in  your  child’ s  soul ;  you  both  will  need  to  believe  in  the 
bright  world  in  which  God  dwells  with  his  saints  and  angels, 
in  order  to  forget  the  sights  you  have  to  behold  in  this. 
But  even  the  dingy,  dusty,  noisome  world  of  a  crowded 
street,  or  the  close  workroom,  or  the  long  day  in  the  fac¬ 
tory,  will  appear  clothed  with  unearthly  charms  when  you 
remember  the  presence  of  angels  with  you  there,  and  the 
splendors  visible  to  the  eye  of  faith,  which  are  ever  stream¬ 
ing  down  on  this  vale  of  toil  and  tears  from  between  the 
opened  gates  of  our  Eternal  Home. 

Feed  your  own  soul  with  joy,  therefore, — just  as  the  bee 
gathers  honey  and  treasures  it  up, — that  you  may  pour  it 
out  on  your  little  angels,  and  keep  them  angels  as  long  as 
you  can, — joyous,  bright-eyed,  bright-faced,  and  bright-tem¬ 
pered.  Provided  that  you  firmly  believe  in  the  angel-world, 
and  in  the  presence  of  guardian  angels  in  your  own  home, 
little  harm  will  come  of  your  children  reading  or  learning 
fairy  tales.  It  will  be  easy  for  you  to  explain  to  them  how 
the  popular  fancy  wove  these  graceful  stories  out  of  the  true 
history  of  man’s  fellowship  with  these  angelic  spirits  from 
the  beginning, — and  of  the  nearness  to  him  of  these  other 
fallen  spirits  who  are  ever  lying  in  wait  for  his  ruin. 

The  chief  aim  in  your  sharing  all  joys  and  amusements 
with  your  dear  ones  should  be  to  make  them  feel  that  your 


NEVER  REPEL  YOUR  CHILDREN. 


157 


presence,  yonr  love  is  for  them  the  source  of  all  present 
happiness,  and  that  they  can  come  to  your  arms,  to  your 
heart  at  all  hours, — just  as  the  weary  laborers  breaking 
stones  along  the  highways  of  France,  can  turn  aside  in  their 
thirst  ax  any  moment  to  the  nearest  cool  spring. 

NEVER  REPEL  YOUR  CHILDREN 

when  they  approach  you.  They  are  drawn  to  you  at 
first  by  the  whole  weight  and  bent  of  their  nature  ;  increase 
that  attraction  more  and  more  by  proving  to  them,  through 
unruffled  patience  and  a  kindness  which  never  varies,  that 
your  love,  under  God,  is  of  all  things  the  most  needful  to 
them,  the  most  sweet,  and  the  most  unfailing.  Child-nature 
must  have  been  thwarted  in  some  of  its  holiest  inclinations 
when  children  fear  to  come  to  their  mother  with  their  every 
joy  and  grief  and  doubt  and  care. 

This  sweet  trust  in  a  mother’ s  unbounded  and  unwearied 
love  is  a  wise  and  most  necessary  provision  of  nature. 
See  how  that  great  nurse  of  all  visible  things  (or,  rather  the 
all- wise  Creator  through  her)  lays  up  in  the  acorn  the  pro¬ 
vision  for  the  bud  of  the  young  oak  during  the  first  stage  of 
its  growth,  and  in  the  cocoa-nut  the  sweet  and  abundant 
nourishment  for  the  young  palm-tree,  or  in  the  egg  the  plen¬ 
tiful  food  of  the  young  bird  till  it  bursts  its  shell  and  can 
provide  for  itself  or  be  fed  for  a  time  by  its  parents.  But, 
man  has  to  depend  through  infancy,  childhood,  and  youth 
on  the  love  and  fostering  care  of  a  mother’s  heart ;  and 
hence  is  it  that  God  has  filled  the  mother’s  heart  with  a 
living  spring  of  tenderness  and  wisdom,  which  is  to  be  the 
main  reliance  of  the  child,  the  young  man  or  the  young 
woman, — not  through  all  childhood  and  youth  only,  but  so 
long  as  lasts  a  mother’s  life. 

And  corresponding  to  this  is  the  need  every  child  has  of 
the  incomparable  treasure  of  a  mother’s  heart,  and  the  pow¬ 
erful  attraction  which  draws  one  to  a  mother’s  bosom  in 
one’s  manifold  doubts,  trials,  and  temptations. 

A  mother  violated  one  of  the  Creator’s  most  beautiful  dis- 


158  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

pensations,  when  she  repels  her  child  from  her  and  does 
not  make  all  her  dear  ones  grow  up  in  the  blessed  expe¬ 
rience  that  their  mother’s  heart  belongs  at  all  times  as 
wholly  to  each  of  them  as  if  she  lived  for  that  one  alone. 

THE  MYSTEEY  OF  BAPTISMAL  INNOCENCE  PRESERVED  IN 

SO  MAM. 

There  are  families,  even  in  the  midst  of  the  most  popu¬ 
lous  cities,  and  surrounded,  by  an  atmosphere  of  political 
and  moral  corruption,  whose  sons  and  daughters  grow  up 
to  manhood  and  womanhood  in  absolute  unconsciousness 
of  the  nature  of  moral  evil,  while  mixing  the  while  with 
the  world  of  their  own  level,  and  possessing  all  the  talents 
and  accomplishments  that  can  adorn  the  sphere  in  which 
they  move.  This  is  no  vague  or  unfounded  assertion, 
thank  God  !  And  we  believe,  moreover,  that  there  are  very 
many  more  such  families  and  such  beautiful  souls  than 
good  people  themselves  are  aware  of. 

Now,  it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  rule  that  in  every  such 
family  the  mother  has  been  brought  up  herself  in  like  sin¬ 
lessness,  and  that  she  has  been  through  life  the  trusted  con¬ 
fidante  of  every  one  of  her  boys  and  girls, — that  from  child¬ 
hood  upward  their  souls  have  been  laid  bare  to  her,  every 
secret  of  their  hearts  made  known  to  her. 

THE  MOTHER  THE  KEEPER  OF  HER  CHILDREN*  S  HEARTS. 

The  true  Christian  mother  will  be  such  by  the  very  force 
of  nature,  if  she  is  only  true  to  that  great  law  of  which  men¬ 
tion  has  just  been  made.  There  will  be  no  need  of  urging 
the  boy  or  the  girl,  the  young  man  or  woman,  to  come  to 
mother  for  advice  or  direction.  A  mother  who  is  prying, 
or  unwisely  exacting,  or  deficient  in  tact,  or  lacking  herself 
in  spirituality  or  the  supernatural  character  belonging  to 
Christian  motherhood,  will  not  obtain  this  ascendency  over 
her  children,  or  draw  them  to  her  with  that  spontaneous  and 
irresistible  attraction  exercised  by  the  pure,  the  vise,  the 
loving  and  devoted  mother  over  every  child  of  hers. 


PIETY  FOUNDED  ON  PRINCIPLE,  HOW  LASTING.  159 

Nor  will  this  beautiful  and  unreserved  confidence,  begot¬ 
ten  of  perfect  love,  interfere  with  the  action  of  God’s  minis¬ 
ter  in  the  sacrament,  as  confessor  and  guide.  Such  mothers 
are  his  most  valuable  auxiliaries  ;  they  prepare  chosen  souls 
for  the  action  of  the  divine  graces. 

HOW  A  SOLID  RELIGIOUS  CHARACTER  IS  FORMED. 

It  is  such  mothers  as  these  whose  enlightened  piety  will 
enable  them  to  lay  in  the  souls  of  their  children  the  founda¬ 
tions  of  a  solid  religious  character.  They  are  careful  to 
give  to  each  practice  of  domestic  or  individual  piety  the 
importance  which  belongs  to  it.  Their  mind’s  eye  takes 
in  so  clearly  and  vividly  the  infinite  greatness  of  that 
Divine  Majesty  in  whose  presence  themselves  and  their  dear 
ones  are  privileged  to  do  service,  that  every  practice  of 
piety  is  deemed  a  thing  of  infinite  importance ;  such  mo¬ 
thers  judge,  and  judge  rightly,  that  nothing  is  little  that  is 
done  for  One  so  great,  so  loving,  so  magnificent  in  his  gen¬ 
erosity. 

From  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  mother,  this  sublime  and 
true  conception  of  the  divine  service  and  of  the  piety  which 
should  be  brought  to  it,  passes  into  the  souls  and  the  lives 
of  her  children.  Hence  there  will  be,  comparatively,  but 
little  danger  of  their  neglecting  in  manhood  and  woman¬ 
hood  the  practices  of  devotion  made  so  sweet  in  childhood, 
or  of  their  failing  in  that  reverential  awe  in  approaching 
the  divine  presence  which  was  instilled  at  their  mother’s 
knee. 

PIETY  FOUNDED  ON  PRINCIPLE,  HOW  LASTING. 

Piety  grounded  like  this,  by  a  true  mother,  on  the  very 
substance  of  a  child’s  intellectual  and  moral  nature,  will 
not  be  likely  to  be  shaken  or  overturned  in  after-life.  It  is 
impossible,  where  all  that  is  most  delightful  in  the  knowl¬ 
edge  of  God  and  in  one’ s  earliest  fellowship  with  him,  and 
with  his  bright  court  of  angels  and  saints  on  high,  have 
been  wound  up  in  the  pure  joys  of  childhood,  and  the  most 


160 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


rapturous  visions  of  youth,  that  the  hollow  maxims  of 
worldly  wisdom,  or  the  sneers  of  the  unbeliever,  the  voices 
of  one’s  equals,  or  the  scandal  of  example  within  the  sanc¬ 
tuary  itself,  can  detach  such  a  soul  from  its  allegiance  to 
God.  Where  religion  has  penetrated  with  the  light  of  its 
principles  the  whole  of  man  or  woman’s  intelligence,  and 
made  the  heart  strong  and  happy  by  its  practice,  the  incon¬ 
sistencies  of  its  professors  or  its  ministers  cannot  have  the 
effect  of  killing  the  roots  of  faith  in  mind  or  heart. 

So,  let  mothers  who  read  this  be  encouraged  to  make 
themselves  all  in  all  to  their  dear  ones  in  their  practices  of 
piety  as  in  their  amusements,  in  every  pursuit,  in  every 
enjoyment,  in  every  trial  and  difficulty,  persuading  them¬ 
selves  firmly  all  the  while  that  God  is  with  them  doing 
their  work,  which  is,  after  all,  his  own  dearest  and  most 
glorious  work.  They  are  sanctifying  their  own  home,  and 
filling  it  with  God  ;  at  the  same  time  he  will  fill  themselves 
and  their  children  with  his  light  and  joy.  The  day  will 
come  when  such  true  mothers,  looking  back,  will  remember 
these  beautiful  lines  of  one  whose  mother  was  more  solicit¬ 
ous  about  her  boy’s  worldly  advancement  than  about  his 
spiritual  welfare : 

“  Oil,  what  a  pure  and  sacred  thing 
Is  beauty  curtained  from  the  sight 
Of  the  gross  world,  illumining 
One  only  mansion  with  her  light  ! 

Unseen  by  man’s  disturbing  eye. 

The  flower  that  blooms  beneath  the  sea 
Too  deep  for  sunbeams,  doth  not  lie 
Hid  in  more  chaste  obscurity. 

A  soul,  too,  more  than  half  divine, 

Where,  through  some  shades  of  earthly  feeling. 

Religion’s  softened  glories  shine, 

Like  light  through  summer  foliage  stealing. 

Shedding  a  glow  of  such  mild  hue, 

So  warm,  and  yet  so  shadowy  too, 

As  makes  the  very  darkness  there 

More  beautiful  than  light  elsewhere.”  * 


*  Thomas  Moore. 


KEEP  OUT  GOSSIP  AND  SCANDAL. 


161 


Yes,  in  the  “chaste  obscurity”  of  a  home  where  a  true 
mother  moves,  the  embodiment  of  all  that  religion  holds  to 
be  most  lovely  to  the  interior  sense,  men  of  the  world  will 
not  feel  repelled  as  they  might  by  the  austerity  of  the 
cloister,  but  attracted  and  subdued  by  all  the  virtues  and 
graces  which  they  behold  shining  with  such  “softened 
glory”  in  the  lives  of  parents  and  children. 

BE  INVARIABLY  CHEERFUL. 

We  must  have  failed  to  convey  our  true  meaning  in  what 
has  just  been  said  about  the  inculcation  of  early  piety,  if 
any  shadow  of  gloom  is  thought  to  rest,  even  for  a  moment, 
on  the  home  of  the  true  Christian  mother,  any  more  than 
on  her  own  brow  or  the  brows  of  her  little  angels.  Oh,  no  ! 
Piety  is  ever  joyous,  sunny,  and  bright.  And,  as  to  the 
mother, — even  when  she  is  suffering  or  burdened  with  care, 
or  carrying  in  her  heart  a  heavy  load  of  grief, — she  must 
put  the  cloud  away  from  her  when  in  presence  of  her  dear 
ones.  There  are  generous  husbands  and  fathers  who  never 
allow  their  business  cares  to  cross  their  threshold ;  they 
leave  them  at  the  doorstep,  and  go  into  their  home-sanc¬ 
tuary  with  unclouded  face  and  warm  smiles  and  words  of 
love  for  all.  They  will  not  have  the  storm  which  pelts  their 
own  hearts  so  mercilessly  in  the  outside  world  make  its 
mutterings  heard  near  the  warm  nest  where  wife  and  chil¬ 
dren  are  sheltered.  So  must  it  be  with  respect  to  the 
mother  and  her  household  cares  and  difficulties  ;  let  them 
never  be  known  to  her  children. 

KEEP  OUT  GOSSIP  AND  SCANDAL. 

Much  more  careful  ought  she  to  be  to  close  her  doors 
against  mere  idle  gossip  ;  and  still  more  so  to  exclude  the 
i  echoes  of  the  scandals  which  are  rumored  abroad.  Hence 
the  necessity  of  selecting  carefully  the  circle  of  those  who 
are  to  be  admitted  to  the  intimacy  of  the  home.  Not  all 
who  call  on  the  mother  are  fit  persons  to  converse  with  the 
11 


162 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


children.  Not  all  who  consider  themselves  to  be  on  a  foot¬ 
ing  of  friendship  with  either  parent,  are  safe  friends  for 
children,  who  have  never  yet  beheld  evil,  or  heard  the  sound 
of  its  voice.  The  acquaintance  with  it  must  always  come 
too  soon  :  it  is  the  inevitable  misfortune  which  a  watchful 
mother  will  stave  off  as  long  as  possible. 

We  once  remember  a  stranger  who  had  been  warmly  re¬ 
commended  to  an  admirable  family,  and  who  had  been 
welcomed  to  all  the  hospitalities  of  the  home  :  it  was  soon 
apparent,  however,  that  he  was  not  what  he  pretended  to 
be,  or  his  outside  friends  had  represented  him.  The  even¬ 
ing  had  passed,  and  all  honor  had  been  done  to  the  guest, 
when  some  one,  in  presence  of  the  younger  children,  made  a 
remark  unfavorable  to  the  stranger.  This  called  forth  an 
indignant  rebuke  from  the  mistress  of  the  house,  who  re¬ 
minded  the  offender  that,  as  she  never  intended  to  invite 
the  stranger  again,  such  censure  was  needless ;  and  that, 
moreover,  it  was  unpardonable,  as  she  never  allowed  any 
one  admitted  to  the  family  circle,  even  for  the  once,  to  be 
spoken  of  unkindly.  . 

And  this  naturally  brings  us  to  say  how  scrupulous  mo¬ 
thers  ought  to  be  to  discountenance  every  thing  approach¬ 
ing  or  leading  to 

UN  CHARITABLENESS. 

On  this  point  the  true  mother  must  be  inflexible.  We 
suppose  her  to  be  thoroughly  enlightened  with  regard  to  the 
transcendent  excellence  of  charity, — that  divine  virtue  prac¬ 
ticed  after  the  manner  of  the  Master  who  gave  himself  to  us, 
who  shields  from  every  eye  our  own  unworthiness,  and 
treats  our  guilty  souls  with  such  infinite  reverence  in  his 
merciful  methods  of  reconciliation:  we  suppose  that  the 
true  Christian  woman,  with  that  deep  sense,  characteristic  of 
her  sex,  of  all  that  is  most  divine  in  humility  as  well  as  in 
charity,  ever  keeps  before  her  mind  the  knowledge  of  God’ s 
infinite  liberality  toward  her  soul  and  of  her  own  very  inade¬ 
quate  return.  This  conviction  of  the  infinitude  of  that  love 
so  unsparing  of  itself  and  its  graces,  and  of  her  own  indebt- 


UNCHARITABLENESS. 


163 


edness  to  the  divine  benefactor,  will  prevent  her  from  look¬ 
ing  down  on  others,  from  judging,  or,  still  less,  despising, 
even  the  most  guilty. 

It  is  one  thing  for  Christian  parents  to  keep  away  from 
the  innocent  souls  intrusted  to  them  all  persons  known  to 
be  not  edifying  or  open  to  serious  suspicion,  and  quite 
another  thing  to  allow  such  persons  to  be  spoken  of  in  their 
home.  Such  persons  should  not  be  admitted  to  the  inti¬ 
macy  of  the  home-circle  ;  that  is  a  matter  of  prudence,  most 
frequently  of  absolute  necessity ;  but  no  less  imperative  is 
it  that  the  faults,  the  failings,  or  the  conduct  of  others 
should  never,  under  any  pretext,  be  made  the  subject  of 
conversation  in  .the  family. 

The  mother  is  queen  there  ;  her  will,  in  all  that  pertains 
to  the  proprieties  and  the  charities  of  life,  no  one,  not  even 
her  husband,  should  be  permitted  to  question.  Indeed,  we 
suppose,  in  what  we  say  here,  that  both  parents  have  long 
ago  resolved  to  be  of  one  mind  on  this  as  on  all  such  mat¬ 
ters.  Whosoever,  therefore,  should  dare  to  trespass  by 
word  or  bearing  against  the  cardinal  virtues  of  the  home, 
should  be  rebuked  by  the  mother  and  mistress. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  allow  the  fear  of  offending  or  making  an 
enemy  to  prevent  one  from  doing  one’s  duty.  The  person 
ungenerous  enough  to  take  offense  at  a  remonstrance  gently, 
delicately,  but  firmly  administered,  would  be  got  rid  of 
very  cheaply.  The  generous-minded, — who  are  often  led  to 
gossip  inadvertently  by  custom  or  the  desire  to  please,  will 
only  conceive  a  higher  respect  for  that  home  and  a  deeper 
esteem  for  its  mistress. 

We  know  of  more  than  one  person  who  has  been  radically 
cured  of  uncharitableness  by  the  firm  but  gentle  rebuke  of 
a  mother  at  her  own  table. 

As  to  making  enemies, — when  a  mother  has  used  tact, 
courtesy,  and  a  gentle  firmness  in  repressing  scandalous  gos¬ 
sip  or  uncharitable  conversations, — she  must  trust  to  the  in¬ 
nate  sense  of  right  and  duty  in  the  persons  rebuked,  as  well 
as  to  God’s  good  care  of  her  home  and  its  welfare. 

A  person  in  authority  having  been  persuaded  by  some 


164 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


gossips  who  had  his  ear,  that  a  lady  visiting  in  a  family 
very  dear  to  him  was  nnworthy  of  such  intimacy,  thought 
himself  bound  to  warn  the  mistress  of  the  home.  She 
listened  without  answering  one  word,  perfectly  certain 
that  her  informant  had  been  imposed  upon  by  mischief- 
makers.  Six  months  afterward  he  came  back  with  a  con¬ 
science  very  much  troubled,  and  begged  to  know  how  far 
the  information  he  had  given — and  which  deeply  affected 
the  moral  character  of  the  person  aspersed — had  been  com¬ 
municated  to  others,  determined,  as  he  said,  to  repair  the 
injury  done,  no  matter  how  widely  it  might  have  spread. 
“Have  no  fear,”  the  prudent  and  charitable  lady  replied  ; 
“I  have  not  even  mentioned  the  subject  to  my  husband. 
Indeed,  I  could  not  in  conscience  do  so,  knowing  that  the 
report  you  heard  was  pure  calumny.” 

This  is  the  rule  of  the  saints,  never  to  mention  what  is  or 
may  be  detrimental  to  another,  except  when  it  is  necessary 
to  do  so  for  the  welfare  of  that  other,  or  to  shield  the  inno¬ 
cent  from  the  imminent  danger  of  contagion.  It  is  related 
in  the  life  of  St.  Ignatius  Loyola,  that,  in  the  discharge  of 
his  office  of  superior-general  of  the  great  society  he  had 
founded,  he  received  serious  charges  against  one  of  his  sub¬ 
ordinates.  He  immediately  laid  the  subject  of  complaint 
before  his  council.  At  his  nightly  examination  of  con¬ 
science  it  occurred  to  him  that  he  might  have  brought  about 
an  effective  amendment  in  the  other’s  misconduct  by  a  re¬ 
proof  privately  administered  and  without  discussing  the 
matter  with  anybody  ; — at  any  rate,  his  conscience  seemed 
to  tell  him  that  it  had  been,  at  the  utmost,  quite  enough 
to  consult  one  or  two  persons,  without  exposing  a  brother’s 
infirmity  to  a  larger  number. 

In  his  grief  he  scourged  himself  most  severely  for  what 
he  considered  a  serious  want  of  discretion,  if  not  of  charity, 
and  then  lay  down.  But  he  could  find  no  rest,  and  had  to 
rise  and  awaken  his  confessor, — though  it  was  past  mid¬ 
night, — before  whom  he  laid  his  fault  with  many  tears  and 
bitter  self-accusation. 

We  must  not  be  tempted  to  accuse  these  great  and  holy 


BAPTISMAL  NAMES. 


165 


souls  of  excessive  rigor  toward  themselves,  or  of  unduly  ex¬ 
aggerating  faults  comparatively  slight,  and  committed,  as 
in  this  last  instance,  through  a  little  precipitancy  at  most. 
When  we  reflect  how  much  mischief, — fatal  and  irrepar¬ 
able  mischief, — may  be  done  by  judging  hastily  and  speak¬ 
ing  rashly,  we  shall  be  slow  to  condemn  St.  Ignatius,  and 
feel  disposed  to  judge  ourselves  rather,  and  call  ourselves 
to  account  for  making  light  of  matters  in  which  the  neigh¬ 
bor’  s  good  name  is  concerned.  It  is,  some  may  think,  but 
a  trifling  imprudence,  while  passing  through  a  field  of  ripe 
corn,  to  cast  away  thoughtlessly  the  end  of  a  lighted  cigar. 
Perhaps  he  who  did  so  never  bestows  a  further  thought  on 
the  matter  till  he  hears  on  the  morrow  that  the  poor  far¬ 
mer’  s  crop  has  been  ruthlessly  swept  away  by  fire,  that  his 
little  home  shared  a  like  fate,  while  he  and  his  family 
barely  escaped  with  their  lives. 

Alas,  we  know  by  the  experience  of  all  time  that  slander, 
beginning  in  a  thoughtless  word,  spreads  as  rapidly  as  fire 
in  the  ripe  corn  ;  and  that  while  the  field  thus  ravaged  may 
bear  a  richer  crop  next  year,  and  while  the  burned  cottage 
may  rise  from  its  ruins,  nothing  can  adequately  repair  the 
ravages  of  uncharitableness,  or  build  up  anew  a  reputation 
ruined  by  an  evil,  an  idle,  or  a  foolish  tongue  ! 

So  let  the  mothers  for  whom  we  write  add  the  horror  of 
uncharitableness  and  impropriety  of  every  kind  to  the 
joyous  and  bright  spirit  with  which  they  train  their  children 
during  this  first  stage, — and  what  a  preparation  will  be 
made  for  the  thorough  education  of  the  noble  boys  and 
noble  girls,  who  are  soon  to  develop  into  the  full  perfection 
of  manhood  and  womanhood  ! 

BAPTISMAL  XAMES. 

We  should  be  untrue  to  our  own  most  cherished  convic¬ 
tions,  as  well  as  to  our  duty  to  Christian  families,  if  we  did 
not,  before  concluding  what  concerns  childhood,  state  what 
is  the  mind  of  the  Church,  and  the  uninterrupted  custom 
of  nineteen  centuries  of  Christian  civilization,  with  regard 


166 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


to  the  names  given  in  baptism  to  each  child  newly  born. 
Let  no  reader  judge  hastily  of  what  he  fancies  we  are  about 
to  say.  Rather,  let  our  words  be  read  attentively  and  our 
reasons  carefully  weighed ;  then,  if  we  mistake  not,  but 
few  who  have  done,  so  will  differ  from  us  in  opinion. 

The  whole  history  of  revealed  religion,  both  before  and 
after  Christ,  brings  before  the  believer  an  immortal  society 
existing  simultaneously  on  earth  and  in  heaven,  into  which 
enter  with  the  three  adorable  Persons  of  the  Trinity  and  the 
faithful  and  glorified  angels,  the  saints  already  resting  in 
eternity  from  their  trials  here  below,  and  the  body  of  believ¬ 
ers  scattered  over  the  earth  and  following  the  divine  law 
handed  down  to  them.  This,  of  course,  is  not  an  adequate 
definition  of  the  Church.  It  is  only  an  imperfect  descrip¬ 
tion  sufficient  for  our  purpose  and  satisfactory  to  all  who 
have  present  to  their  minds  the  correct  idea  of  the  Church 
as  it  embraces  earth  and  heaven. 

From  the  earliest  dawn  of  historic  times  there  is  apparent 
in  that  portion  of  the  race  to  which  God  had  intrusted  the 
primitive  revelation  and  the  promises  attached  to  it,  a  deep 
veneration  both  for  the  great  patriarchs  or  ancestors  who 
had,  from  age  to  age,  been  faithful  to  the  truth  in  the  midst 
of  infidelity  and  corruption,  and  a  no  less  veneration  for  the 
glorious  spirits  who  from  the  beginning  held  intercourse 
with  men,  and  were  the  messengers  of  the  Divine  Goodness 
in  their  behalf. 

Hence  a  very  natural  tendency  to  bestow  on  newly  born 
children'  the  name  of  some  one  of  these  glorious  ancestors 
or  of  the  mighty  spirits  who  had  been  sent  on  some  memor¬ 
able  errand  of  deliverance  or  mercy.  This  tendency,  though 
much  less  remarkable  among  the  Hebrew  people  before 
the  Christian  era,  became  very  speedily  a  common  custom 
among  the  followers  of  Christ;  and  to  the  names  most 
popular  and  venerated  in  the  Old  Testament  period,  were 
substituted  or  added  those  of  the  men  and  women  most 
conspicuous  in  Christian  story, — the  names  of  the  Blessed 
Mother,  of  the  apostles  and  disciples,  of  the  most  illustrious 
of  the  early  martyrs  and  teachers  of  the  gospel,  and,  from 


BAPTISMAL  NAMES. 


167 


age  to  age,  of  the  persons  instrumental  in  propagating 
Christianity  in  different  countries,  as  well  as  of  those  who 
had  been  most  venerated  in  life,  and  after  death,  for  their 
holiness  and  eminent  services  to  the  flock  of  Christ. 

The  ancient  Hebrews  incorporated  the  name  of  God  in 
their  language  with  most  of  the  names  which  they  bestowed 
on  their  babes,  both  for  the  purpose  of  placing  them 
thereby  in  a  special  manner  under  the  protection  of  Jeho¬ 
vah,  and  for  that  of  stimulating  them  when  grown  up  to  be 
worthy  of  the  name  they  bore.  Such,  in  a  certain  mea¬ 
sure,  was  also  their  aim  in  bestowing  on  their  children  the 
names  of  men  or  angels. 

Nor  was  the  object  of  the  early  Christians  substantially 
different,  when  they  showed  a  predilection  for  the  names  of 
Mary,  Martha,  Peter,  Paul,  John, — or  in  later  ages  when 
they  called  their  sons  Augustine,  Cyprian,  Basil,  Gregory, 
Patricius  or  Patrick,  and  their  daughters  Monica,  Agnes, 
Cecilia,  or  Scholastica.  The  babe  who  was  incorporated  with 
the  Church  of  earth  under  the  good  omen  of  such  a  name, 
was  held  to  have  a  claim  on  the  protection  of  the  great  saint 
in  heaven  who  first  illustrated  it  by  godlike  virtues,  and 
an  obligation  to  emulate  the  sanctity  of  the  patron  thus 
given  in  baptism.  Indeed,  among  the  ancient  Irish,  the 
custom  was  common  of  adding  the  word  Gilla ,  “servant,” 
to  the  saint-name,  to  declare  positively  this  profession  of 
honoring  and  serving  the  saint  given  to  one  as  patron. 

While,  therefore,  the  family  or  clan  name,  whether  glori¬ 
ous  or  obscure,  continued  to  be  borne  by  all  the  members 
as  a  common  appellation,  the  individual  was  distinguished 
by  some  sweet  saint-name  from  every  other  among  the 
kindred.  Thus  in  every  Christian  land  the  entire  popu¬ 
lation  was  connected  in  fellowship  and  spiritual  inter¬ 
course  with  all  that  was  most  glorious  in  the  past,  all  that 
was  greatest  and  highest  in  the  divine  society  of  heaven : 
thus  the  earthly  Jerusalem,  by  the  very  names  born  by  its 
members,  was  the  image  of  the  city  of  God  on  high. 

There  is  in  this  venerable  and  time-honored  custom  of 
giving  saint-names  in  baptism  to  every  new  child  of  the 


168 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


Christian  family,  a  something  so  beautiful,  so  deserving  of 
all  reverence,  so  deeply  rooted  in  the  holiest  and  far-reach¬ 
ing  affections  of  the  race,  that  it  is  unaccountable  how  any 
family  calling  itself  Christian  should  overlook  it,  and  sac¬ 
rilegious  in  a  Catholic  family  to  violate  it  by  bestowing 
on  their  babes  some  name  of  modern  notoriety,  and,  not 
seldom,  of  very  doubtful  fame. 

The  Reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century  set  aside  the 
beautiful  Christian  customs  of  the  preceding  ages,  rejected 
the  saints,  and  substituted  for  them  Biblical  names.  The 
Independents  and  Puritans  went  further,  and  showed  an 
almost  exclusive  predilection  for  Old  Testament  heroes  and 
heroines,  and  for  many  names  which  were  those  of  any  thing 
but  heroines  or  heroes.  From  this  extreme  there  has  been 
a  reaction  among  the  descendants  of  the  Puritans  in  Amer¬ 
ica,  and  now  the  rage  is  for  the  names  of  modern  distin¬ 
guished  men  and  women,  or  for  every  name  of  man  and 
woman  which  may  tickle  the  ear  or  please  the  fancy  of 
fathers  and  mothers  who  delight  in  “Dime  Novels,”  and 
worship  the  names  they  find  therein. 

It  is  the  custom  of  the  universal  Church,  and  a  positive 
ecclesiastical  law  in  many  countries,  that  one  at  least  of  the 
surnames  given  in  baptism,  should  be  that  of  a  saint. 

We  are  writing  in  a  country  where,  unhappily,  with  some 
of  the  objectionable  customs  of  the  sturdy  old  Puritans, 
other  most  laudable  customs,  having  their  roots  far  back  in 
the  past,  are  fast  dying  out.  Catholic  families  who  have 
come  hither  to  cast  their  lot  with  the  posterity  of  their  bit¬ 
terest  foes  of  old,  are — and  it  is  a  pity — f orgetting  not  a  few 
of  the  traditions  of  their  fathers, — traditions  dear  to  the 
“Old  Land,”  and  blessed  of  God  and  man.  Their  children 
in  this  liberty  and  novelty  loving  generation  would  blush 
to  bear  the  name  of  Patrick,  so  nobly  borne  by  the  soldier- 
President  of  France ;  they  disdain  the  name  of  John,  or 
James,  or  Paul ;  while  young  girls  are  ashamed  of  being 
called  Bridget,  or  Winifred,  or  Margaret,  or  Monica, — names 
which  shall  eternally  remain  in  human  history  as  some  of  the 
most  glorious  ever  borne  by  woman.  We  say  nothing  of 


BAPTISMAL  NAMES. 


169 


the  ever-blessed  name  of  Mary, — or  only  mention  it  to  pro¬ 
test  against  seeing  it  disfigured  by  the  abominably  vulgar 
rage  for  “pet  names,”  which  has  seized  on  all  classes  of 
American  women.  Let  the  sweet  and  hallowed  name  of  her 
who  is  the  Mother  of  our  Life,  the  true  ‘ ‘  Mother  of  all  the 
Living,”  remain  unchanged  and  unvailed  in  our  Catholic 
households.  Blessed  be  the  mothers  who  bear  it  nobly, 
and  who  teach  their  daughters  to  honor  it  with  all  the  vir¬ 
tues  and  graces  of  true  womanhood ! 


CHAPTEK  XL 


A  DIGRESSION,  WHICH  MAY  SERVE  AS  A  REST,  AND  A 
PREPARATION  FOR  WHAT  FOLLOWS. 

Felix  qui  propriis  cevum  transegit  in  arms, 

Ipsa  domus  puerum  quern  videt  ipsa  senem. 

Blessed  who  in  his  own  fields  his  life  hath  passed. 

Whom  the  same  house  both  boy  and  old  man  sees. 

Claudian. 

Good  Heaven  !  what  sorrows  gloomed  that  parting  day, 

That  called  them  from  their  native  walks  away  ; 

When  the  poor  exiles,  every  pleasure  past, 

Hung  round  the  bowers,  and  fondly  looked  their  last, 

And  took  a  long  farewell,  and  wished  in  vain 
For  seats  like  these  beyond  the  western  main  ; 

And  shuddering  still  to  face  the  distant  deep, 

Returned  and  wept,  and  still  returned  to  weep. 

Goldsmith. 

If  to  any  it  should  seem  that  the  instructions  given  in 
the  preceding  chapter  were  more  fitted  to  the  intelligence 
and  leisure  of  wealthy  homes  than  to  mothers  overburdened 
with  toil  and  pinched  with  the  care  of  the  morrow, — we  shall 
not  deny  that  we  had  principally  in  view  therein  parents 
left  free  by  affluence,  or  at  least,  by  competence,  to  devote 
themselves  to  the  sacred  duties  of  motherhood.  We  also 
supposed  that  the  father,  in  every  such  household,  gave  his 
most  hearty  support  to  the  mother’ s  plan  of  government. 

Nevertheless,  the  general  principles  we  have  laid  down 
and  illustrated,  apply  to  all  homes  and  all  mothers,  as  it 
will  be  easy  to  convince  one’s  self  by  an  attentive  perusal  of 
the  chapter.  Lest,  however,  a  single  mother  dwelling  amid 

170 


HOME  CULTURE  IN  CATHOLIC  LANDS. 


171 


the  necessities  of  hard  daily  toil,  if  not  the  pressing  needs 
of  poverty,  should  deem  herself  to  have  been  overlooked  in 
these  pages,  or  reproach  us  justly  with  passing  her  by  and 
not  uttering  either  a  word  to  cheer  her  at  her  task  or  a  word 
to  point  out  the  better  road,  we  shall  address  ourselves  to 
the  wives  of  laboring  men  in  what  we  are  about  to  say. 

Only,  anxious  as  we  are  to  make  the  general  reader 
understand  some  of  the  greatest  obstacles  which  mothers 
who  are  not  wealthy  have  to  overcome  in  the  performance 
of  their  motherly  duties,  we  crave  permission  to  turn  aside 
one  moment  from  our  direct  path,  in  order  to  explain  in 
what  consists  one  great  difference  between  the  homes  of  the 
majority  of  our  English-speaking  Catholics  in  the  Eastern 
and  Middle  States  and  the  homes  in  which  they  were  born 
and  reared  “in  the  Old  Country. ” 

HOME  CULTURE  IX  CATHOLIC  LAXDS. 

Be  it  said  here,  once  for  all,  it  is  an  error  but  too  general 
among  a  certain  educated  public,  to  think  that  the  peas¬ 
antry  and  the  laboring  classes,  in  what  were  once  called 
Catholic  countries,  are  devoid  of  all  culture,  all  refine¬ 
ment,  all  the  courtesies  and  graces  of  life, — and  that,  too, 
in  consequence  of  their  not  being  able  to  read !  There  is 
indeed  a  very  marked  difference  between  the  country  peo¬ 
ple  and  the  townsfolk  nowadays,  and  the  difference  is  not 
in  favor  of  the  town.  But, — and  we  speak  of  what  was  or 
what  is  in  places  and  among  populations  where  religion  has 
had  her  full  legitimate  influence,  and  where  civil  intoler¬ 
ance  has  not  tied  the  tongue  as  w^ell  as  the  hands  of  the 
Church, — we  say  it  most  emphatically,  there  always  is  in  the 
most  modest  farmer’ s  cottage,  or  the  poorest  laborer’s  dwell¬ 
ing,  refinement,  intelligence,  courtesy,  chastity,  truth  and 
honesty,  dignity  of  manners,  in  one  word,  all  traceable  to 
religious  teaching. 

Let  readers,  whoever  they  may  be,  allow  the  writer  to 
pour  out  his  full  heart  here,  to  tell  what  he  has  seen  and 
what  he  knows  by  life-long  experience  of  the  homes  of  the 


172 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


laboring  classes,  whether  in  town  or  country  ; — the  descrip¬ 
tion  will  enable  him,  and  the  reader  with  him,  to  grasp  the 
true  reality  of  education  during  boyhood  and  girlhood  in 
the  lowly  homes  where  God  is  still  feared,  and  father  and 
mother  reverenced.  Let  us  go  back  to  these  homes,  in 
which  ancestral  faith  and  piety,  with  their  sweet  train  of 
domestic  graces  and  customs  have  never  ceased  to  reign. 
The  memory  of  childhood,  with  its  golden  sunlight  lending 
to  all  things  a  glory  and  enchantment,  brings  back 

“  The  house  where  I  was  born. 

The  little  window  where  the  sun 
Came  peeping  in  at  morn  ;  ” 


or  with  one  who  was  himself  born  on  that  dear  soil,  and 
who,  early  and  late,  had  tasted  of  the  bitter  as  of  the  sweet 
of  poverty  : 

“  Blest  be  that  spot,  where  cheerful  guests  retire 
To  pause  from  toil,  and  trim  their  evening  fire  ; 

Blest  that  abode,  'where  want  and  pain  repair, 

And  every  stranger  finds  a  ready  chair  ; 

Blest  be  those  feasts,  Avith  simple  plenty  crowned, 

Where  all  the  ruddy  family  around 
Laugh  at  the  jests  or  pranks  that  never  fail. 

Or  sigh  with  pity  at  some  mournful  tale  ; 

Or  press  the  bashful  stranger  to  his  food. 

And  learn  the  luxury  of  doing  good.” 

HOMES  IN  IRELAND. 

The  secluded  cottage,  set  in  its  wealth  of  green  fields  and 
flowering  hedges,  is  now  distinctly  before  the  eye  of  our 
soul,  witli  the  calm  little  lake  near  at  hand,  and  the  hills 
rising  beyond  and  sloping  away  to  where  one  gigantic  form 
towered  in  mid-air,  its  top  crowned  with  some  ruin  of  far- 
off  ages,  and  at  its  foot  a  cluster  of  villages  nestling,  as  if 
the  generations  which  once  peopled  them  had  found  protec¬ 
tion  in  the  now  ruined  stronghold.  There  was,  just  where 
the  lake  ended,  and  a  young  brook  ran  wildly  out,  like  a 
school-boy  from  school,  an  ancient  mill,  which  still  did 


VILLAGES  CHANGED  INTO  PASTURE  LANDS. 


173 


service  to  farmers  for  many  a  mile  around  ;  while  at  the  op¬ 
posite  end  the  ivy-covered  walls  of  the  ancient  abbey  or 
parish  church  lifted  itself  above  the  silver  mirror  of  the 
lake,  and  around  the  ruin  slept  untold  generations  of  men 
and  women  who  had  “  kept  the  faith,”  and  whose  descend¬ 
ants  still  wished  to  rest  by  the  side  of  their  parents  till 
the  final  wakening.  There,  too, — God  knows, — he  who  pens 
these  lines  would  fain  repose,  near  the  ruined  altars  of  his 
ancestral  faith  and  by  the  side  of  her  who  gave  him  birth 
and  was  taken  from  him  while  he  was  still  a  child. 

VILLAGES  CHANGED  INTO  PASTURE  LANDS. 

We  know  not  what  change  the  hand  of  time  has  made  in 
the  scene  thus  indelibly  stamped  on  heart  and  memory. 
Famine  has  been  busy  there  also,  with  fever  always  follow¬ 
ing  in  the  train  of  famine  ;  and  many  a  ship,  like  that  which 
bore  away  the  writer  well-nigh  fifty  years  ago,  has  sailed 
from  the  glorious  neighboring  bay  crowded  with  the  sorrow¬ 
ing  but  hopeful  men  and  women  who  followed  across  the 
deep  in  the  track  of  the  westering  sun  !  And  so  the  dear 
homes  were  made  desolate  or  swept  away  ruthlessly  from 
the  face  of  the  land,  as  being  the  too  eloquent  witnesses  to 
secular  misrule  and  oppression.  So  be  it !  We  recall  their 
memory  not  to  stir  up  the  bitterness  of  so  many  hearts 
made  sore  by  unmerited  wrong,  but  to  celebrate  the  sancti¬ 
ties  and  the  virtues  which  bloomed  immortal  in  those  lowly 
homes,  and  whose  roots  still  cling  to  the  soil  as  tenaciously 
as  the  ivy  to  apse  and  chancel- wall  in  the  once  beautiful 
church  on  yonder  lake  shore. 

There  was  not  a  village  on  the  populous  plain,  or  along 
the  shores  of  its  many  lakes,  or  hidden  away  among  its 
wild  mountain  tracts,  which  had  not  its  own  traditions  of 
honor,  bravery,  and  honesty,  nor  a  home  in  these  villages 
which  did  not  possess  an  inheritance  of  spotless  purity 
handed  down  from  mother  to  daughter  since  the  days  of 
St.  Bridget  and  before,  which  was  not  surrounded  by  an 
atmosphere  of  ancestral  piety  and  uprightness  that  was 


174  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

the  life -breath  of  father  and  son  from  age  to  age.  The 
ancient  race  had  been  despoiled  of  almost  every  right  and 
franchise ;  of  all  property  in  the  soil,  even  of  the  freedom 
to  cultivate  it ;  *  they  had  been  left  without  the  comforts  of 
a  civilized  home ;  and  in  their  squalid  huts  the  ruthless 
bands  of  Elizabeth  and  Cromwell  had  not  even  left  what  is 
to  this  day  the  pride  and  consolation  of  the  Icelander  in  his 
turf  cabin,  their  ancient  native  literature.  How  it  fared 
with  the  churches,  the  monasteries,  the  countless  schools, 
the  benevolent  institutions  of  every  kind  which  covered 
the  land,  and  were  the  well-springs  of  culture  and  highest 
civilization, — even  Protestant  historians  may  tell  sorrow- 
ingly. 

HOME  ATMOSPHERE  AND  VIRTUES. 

But,  despite  all  this  ruin,  and  the  religious  and  civil  op¬ 
pression  of  three  hundred  years, — every  family  in  the  land 
had  its  name  for  fidelity  to  God,  for  spotless  chastity,  for 
honor  unimpeached, — and  to  that  name  it  clung  with  a 
worship  as  unwavering  and  a  watchfulness  as  sleepless  as 
the  ancient  Greek  or  Roman  had  for  his  household  altar 
and  the  sacred  fire.  • 

The  authority  of  father  and  mother  was  sacred  in  the 
eyes  of  all,  and  most  sacredly  obeyed  ;  their  will  and  their 
word  were  rarely,  if  ever,  questioned.  The  father  was  king 
within  his  home, — though  it  might  be  in  appearance  scarcely 
one  degree  above  the  hut  of  the  savage  ;  but,  though  strip¬ 
ped  of  all  earthly  goods,  and  barely  tolerated  on  the  land 
which  had  belonged  to  himself  and  his  ancestors,  the  father 
had  lost  none  of  his  self-respect,  no  part  of  the  reverence 
and  love  which  were  wont  to  be  paid  to  him  and  his  in 
other  days,  and  in  a  dwelling  befitting  a  freeman  and  a 
soldier.  It  was  the  patriarchal  ideal  of  home-authority 
consecrated  and  elevated  by  the  Christian  faith  :  all  who 
were  born  amid  this  home-atmosphere  will  remember  how 
absolute  was  the  sway  of  that  paternal  rule.  But  superior 


*  See  Hall’s  “  Ireland,  Scenery,  Character,  etc.,”  vol.  iii.,  p.  3G1  and  foil. 


DOMESTIC  EDUCATION  IN  THESE  HOMES.  175 

even  to  that,  because  founded  on  equal  reverence  and  aris¬ 
ing  from  a  love  all  unmixed  with  fear,  was  the  authority, 
the  sway  of  the  mother  in  those  humble  but  holy  house¬ 
holds.  Who  ever  thought  of  rebelling  against  the  father’s 
rule,  even  when  it  bore  most  heavily  on  its  unoffending  as 
well  as  its  offending  subjects  ?  Who  was  ever  heard  to  set 
aside  a  mother’s  will  and  to  be  blessed  of  God  or  happy 
among  men  ? 

DOMESTIC  EDUCATION  IN  THESE  HOMES. 

We  can  never  forget  the  band  of  children,  often  com¬ 
posed  of  those  of  several  relatives,  crowding  together  into 
one  of  these  hospitable  homes  to  partake  together  of  the  in¬ 
struction  imparted  for  a  season  by  some  itinerant  master  of 
repute  ; — and  of  the  implicit  obedience  all  yielded  to  the 
dear  mistress  of  the  house.  The  dominie’s  rod, — sharjd  as  it 
was  known  to  be, — had  less  terrors  for  any  of  us  than  a 
look  of  displeasure  from  auntie’ s  gentle  but  watchful  eye. 
And  even  when  no  dominie  was  there,  she  could  keep  us  to 
our  tasks,  not  all  unwillingly,  push  us  forward  more  rap¬ 
idly,  kindle  by  her  sweet  smile  and  soft,  low  voice  a  more 
intense  emulation  in  the  breasts  of  all.  It  was  like  a  bee¬ 
hive  ;  all  labored  silently,  unceasingly,  under  the  influence 
of  the  queen  of  the  hive :  she  did  not  seem  to  see  or  hear, 
and  had  no  monitors  or  spies  about  the  school-room  or  the 
house.  But  we  worked  hard  from  morning  till  night  to 
have  one  word  of  praise  from  her  or  one  motherly  kiss. 
And  then  at  night  there  was  a  chapter  read  by  her  from 
the  Life  of  Christ  by  St.  Bonaventure,  illustrated,  too,  by 
some  delightful  tales  of  her  own, — some  miracle  of  protec¬ 
tion  performed  during  the  evil  days  of  the  Commonwealth, 
or  Elizabeth’s  devastations,  or  during  the  atrocious  reign 
of  the  soldiery  of  Cornwallis  in.  1798,  which  had  utterly 
ruined  every  one  of  our  families.'*  We  almost  beheld  with 
the  eyes  of  the  body  the  angels  who  kept  watch  and  ward 


*  See  Hall’s  “  Ireland,”  ibidem,  pp.  379,  383,  3S1. 


176 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


over  the  ruined  abbey  and  its  church,  with  the  crowded 
cemetery  that  hugged  its  walls  ;  we  believed  they  could  be 
seen  upon  the  lake  at  Hallo  we’  en,  Christmas,  and  Easter¬ 
tide.  We  knew  they  watched  over  us  day  and  night,  and 
through  awe  of  their  presence  we  kept  silence  after  night- 
prayers  and  till  after  morning  prayers  the  next  day. 

But,  oh  the  happy  houseful  swayed  by  that  loving 
heart  and  that  unfailing  tenderness,  and  the  bright  look  of 
that  gentle  woman  from  whom  no  sound  of  anger  or  loud 
reproof  was  ever  known  to  come !  God  rest  thee, — who 
wert  a  mother  to  the  orphan,  and  more  than  mother  to  thy 
own  !  Gratitude  cannot  inscribe  a  monument  to  thee  ;  but 
let  thy  work  live  in  these  humble  pages;  if  God’s  good 
blessing  should  bestow  on  them  any  lasting  utility ! 

THESE  TRADITIONS  TO  BE  CHERISHED  IN  AMERICA. 

What  is  the  purpose  of  this  narration  ?  This :  to  show 
that  families  who  boast, — albeit  only  the  families  of  the 
laboring  poor, — their  descent  from  this  ancient  stock  of  be¬ 
lievers,  must  not  allow  the  most  precious  and  venerable  tra¬ 
ditions  of  their  former  home,  the  home  of  their  fathers  far 
away,  to  be  lost  in  the  homes  they  create  for  their  dear  ones 
in  another  land.  On  the  contrary,  amid  the  civil  and  reli¬ 
gious  freedom  enjoyed  in  their  adopted  country,  it  behooves 
them  to  give  to  these  traditions,  home  virtues,  and  home 
education,  which  are  or  ought  to  be  the  jewels  of  their 
heart,  a  fairer,  a  more  magnificent  setting  than  they  could 
have  had  in  the  homes  left  behind. 

This,  then,  is  what  we  would  impress  upon  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  our  readers,  that  the  new  home  in  America,  in 
Australia,  in  Africa,  in  Asia,— -wheresoever  the  dividing 
wave  may  have  cast  the  exiles, — should  be  (for  it  can  be) 
more  Christian,  more  supernatural,  more  lovely,  than  the 
homes  on  the  banks  of  the  Shannon  or  the  Moy,  on  the 
shores  of  Loch  Corrib  or  Loch  Neagh. 

The  question  is,  whether  or  not  the  home  of  the  Catholic 
farmer  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  North  Amer- 


BASQUES  AND  THEIR  ANCESTRAL  COATS  OF  ARMS.  177 

ica,  or  that  of  the  laborer  in  city  or  manufacturing  center, 
or  of  the  merchant  and  tradesman  anywhere  among  ns, — 
has  preserved  the  traditions  of  reverence  for  parental  au¬ 
thority,  of  that  simplicity  and  unsuspecting  innocence  in 
boyhood  and  girlhood,  of  sensitiveness  in  guarding  the 
honor  of  mother  and  daughter,  and  the  incorruptible  hon¬ 
esty  of  father  and  sons, — so  characteristic  of  the  former 
family  life. 

EACH  HOME  HAD  ITS  ANCESTRAL  HONOR  TO  GUARD. 

We  all  know, — and  it  is  a  most  blissful  recollection, — 
that  the  jealous  watchfulness  with  which  each  family  in 
the  old  land  guarded  its  unstained  reputation, — was,  under 
God’s  providence,  the  main  preserver  of  family  honor  and 
happiness.  Where  each  family  was  known  to  its  neighbors 
throughout  a  wide  and  populous  circle,  and  was  far  more 
careful  of  the  unstained  honor  of  its  members  than  of  life 
itself, — far  more  ambitious  of  having  the  good  opinion  and 
good  word  of  every  man,  woman,  and  child  for  many  miles 
around, — any  act  entailing  dishonor  or  shame  must  have 
been  of  very  unfrequent  occurrence.  Indeed,  the  infamy 
attached  to  any  such  stain  was  such,  and  the  disgrace  so 
intolerable,  that  the  individual  had  to  go  into  voluntary  and 
perpetual  banishment,  and  very  often  the  entire  family  had 
to  disappear. 

THE  BASQUES  AND  THEIR  ANCESTRAL  COATS  OF  ARMS. 

In  a  former  chapter  we  mentioned  a  beautiful  custom  of 
the  Basques  relating  to  their  manner  of  bestowing  alms. 
Let  us, — before  we  go  further  in  this  most  important  mat¬ 
ter, — compare  in  another  respect  this  most  ancient  Catholic 
race  with  the  Celts,  their  brothers  in  religion,  and,  not  im¬ 
probably,  their  associates  in  flood  and  field  in  the  far-off 
period  when  both  migrated  westward  from  Mesopotamia. 

In  Biscay  every  family  is  noble.  Nor  is  this  an  idle  or 
unfounded  boast  of  a  warlike  and  liberty-loving  race.  Their 
right  to  have  armorial  bearings  is  one  admitted  from  time 
12 


178  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

immemorial.  Hence  every  house  has  its  coat  of  arms  ;  and 
some  houses  of  peasants,  mechanics,  or  fishermen  along  the 
coast  have  on  their  shield  more  quarters  than  the  proudest 
escutcheons  of  England  or  France.  We  have  heard  and 
read  much  of  late  of  the  obstinacy  with  which,  all  through 
the  present  century,  the  Basques  have  fought  against  every 
government  for  their  just  and  ancient  privileges ;  but  we 
have  but  little  conception  of  the  lofty  and  indomitable  love 
of  freedom  with  which  they  have  so  battled  from  before  the 
dawn  of  Christianity,  or  of  the  incorruptible  spirit  of  faith 
with  which  they  defend  their  Catholic  altars. 

All  honor  to  that  heroic  race  whose  struggle  for  liberty 
has  been  one  of  two  thousand  years  !  Hence  the  pride, — a 
noble  and  a  legitimate  pride, — with  which  that  vigorous, 
healthful,  comely,  and  Catholic  race  looks  upon  every 
homestead  in  the  land,  and  upon  the  shields, — ancient  and 
venerable,  and  often  numerous, — which  adorn  the  outside 
of  their  homes. 

THE  BASQUES  CANNOT  TRANSPLANT  THEIR  ANCESTRAL 

HOMES. 

Take  the  Basque  away  from  his  native  mountains  in 
G-uipuzcoa,  he  will  be,  wherever  he  goes,  the  same  ener¬ 
getic,  brave,  and  believing  man.  Transplant  whole  villages 
from  among  their  ancestral  hills  or  their  glorious  historic 
strongholds  along  the  coast,  and  you  will  have,  whitherso¬ 
ever  you  lead  them,  some  of  the  noblest  specimens  of  hu¬ 
manity  to  be  found  on  the  earth.  But  can  you  transplant 
with  them  the  homes  consecrated  by  so  many  unbroken 
centuries  of  domestic  virtue,  and  honored  by  so  many  re¬ 
corded  deeds  of  public  worth  ?  Can  you  transfer  the  inte¬ 
rior  and  exterior  atmosphere  of  these  homes  ? 

WHAT  THE  IRISH  EMIGRANT  CANNOT  FIND  IN  niS  NEW 

HOME. 

So  is  it  with  that  other  race  of  which  we  are  now  solicitous. 
Emigration  not  only  scatters  the  members  of  the  same  village 


A  CROWDED  CITY  FATAL  TO  FORMER  HOME-LIFE.  179 


and  neighborhood,  even  when  they  chance  to  migrate  to¬ 
gether  ;  but  it  separates  widely  and  forever  members  of  the 
same  family  and  household,  and  thereby  the  wholesome 
and  priceless  restraints  and  safeguards  of  neighborship  are 
lost  to  the  emigrants  in  their  new  home. 

The  evil  thence  resulting  might  be  only  a  half  evil  could 
neighbors  “at  home  ”  continue  to  be  neighbors  in  their  new 
home.  There  seems  to  be  a  strong  current  of  opinion  run¬ 
ning  or  tending  in  this  direction  at  the  present  moment. 
But  it  only  points  to  future  possibilities,  and  we  are  deal¬ 
ing  here  with  the  realities  of  the  present.  The  tide  of  emi¬ 
gration  has  been  toward  the  great  cities,  where  the  facil¬ 
ities  of  daily  labor  appeared  greatest,  and  higher  wages 
enabled  the  new-comers  to  provide  many  comforts  and  lux¬ 
uries  hitherto  unknown  to  them.  Thus  the  wretched  agri¬ 
cultural  life  they  had  formerly  led  contrasted  unfavorably 
with  the  ease  of  their  present  condition. 

And  so, — not  unnaturally, — the  great  mass  of  emigrants 
from  Ireland  settled  down  in  the  cities,  leaving  the  rich  un¬ 
occupied  lands  of  the  interior,  with  their  certain  prospects 
of  health,  longevity,  independence,  and  substantial  political 
power  to  other  races,  happier  both  in  the  experience  of  bet¬ 
ter  social  conditions  and  in  the  wiser  direction  given  to  them 
present  aims  and  energies. 

A  CROWDED  CITY  FATAL  TO  THE  FORMER  HOME-LIFE. 

*  •  (  « 

But  a  family  transplanted  from  a  quiet  country  district- 
in  Ireland,  or  from  the  scarcely  less  quiet  suburb  of  one  of 
its  cities,  finds  itself  utterly  lost  in  a  large  city  in  the  New 
World.  Their  coming  only  adds  one  unit  more  to  the  vast 
sum  of  uncertain  labor  and  certain  indigence.  Whatever 
may  be  their  chances  of  finding  employment  and  forcing  their 
way  to  independence, — they  are,  generally,  utter  strangers  ; 
all  the  ties,  affections,  and  holy  influences  of  the  ancient 
home  and  neighborhood  are  gone  forever.  Their  good 
name,  the  stainless  honor  of  the  family  in  the  past,  is  a  thing 
of  but  little  account  to  the  hungry,  anxious,  bustling  crowd 


180 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


which  daily  pours  out  from  the  streets  among  which  the 
new  home  lies  buried,  to  seek  for  work  and  for  bread.  In 
that  crowd  there  are  hundreds  who  are  glad  to  have  their 
past  concealed,  and  who  care  but  little  what  stain  may  fall 
upon  their  next-door  neighbors. 

There  is  in  the  social  atmosphere  of  this  neighborhood  a 
tone  of  morality  far  lower  than  that  which  reigned  in  the 
native  village ;  there  are  many  things  in  what  the  new¬ 
comers  see  and  hear  which  shock  their  sense  and  alarm 
their  conscience.  But  who  does  not  know  that  one  gets 
soon  accustomed  and  indifferent  to  this  sort  of  atmosphere, 
just  as  one  becomes  gradually  acclimated  in  the  bitter 
cold  of  the  north,  or  the  torrid  heat  of  the  tropics  and  the 
equator  ? 

Our  readers  will  then  admit  that  very  many,  if  not  most 
of  the  families  whom  this  book  may  reach,  are  laboring 
under  sad  disadvantages  in  the  work  of  rearing  and  edu¬ 
cating  their  boys  and  'girls. 

THIS  IS  XO  EEFLECTIOX  OX  AMEEICAX  IXSTITUTIOXS. 

Let  us  not  be  misunderstood.  We  are  not  undervaluing 
in  any  one  respect  the  many  priceless  blessings  which  ffow 
from  American  liberty  and  the  working  of  our  free  institu¬ 
tions.  We  are  not  depreciating  American  manhood  and 
womanhood.  Our  purpose,  well-weighed  according  to  the 
light  of  our  best  judgment,  is  to  aid  to  our  utmost,  be¬ 
fore  we  go  to  our  account,  in  the  sacred  work  of  rearing 
from  among  the  laboring  masses  armies  of  true  men  and 
women  who  will  build  up  the  glorious  America  of  our 
dreams. 

Those  who  are  apt  to  take  fire  at  any  allusion  to  the  de¬ 
terioration  of  races  in  our  country,  are,  generally,  persons 
born  of  emigrant  parents,  and  who  fancy  that  any  compar¬ 
ison  instituted  concerning  the  degree  of  physical  vigor,  the 
level  of  intellectual  culture  or  moral  worth  of  the  first  and 
second  generations  born  on  American  soil,  conveys  a  per¬ 
sonal  slight  on  every  one  so  born. 


HOW  POOR  MOTHERS  MIGHT  BE  AIDED.  181 


PRESERVE  YOUR  HOME  INHERITANCE  OF  VIRTUE,  AND  ADD 

TO  IT. 

No,  no,  we  are  here  trying  to  consider  carefully  what  are 
the  obstacles  which  are  found  in  the  homes  of  our  laborers, 
of  our  tradesmen,  of  our  poor,  toward  the  successful  educa¬ 
tion  of  men  and  women  fitted  to  be  themselves  the  best  of 
parents  in  their  turn,  and  to  rear  children  of  their  own,  in¬ 
heriting,  with  the  qualities  and  virtues  of  father  and  mother, 
a  superadded  stock  of  true  manliness  and  womanliness, — the 
highest  wealth  which  can  be  brought  to  the  service  of  any 
country. 

We  are  endeavoring  to  point  out  to  father  and  mother  in 
every  home  into  which  this  book  may  go,  how  to  preserve 
sacredly  every  particle  of  their  ancestral  inheritance  of  faith, 
of  morality,  of  honor,  honesty,  and  that  true  pride  founded 
on  the  consciousness  of  unstained  descent,  personal  integrity, 
independence,  and  legitimate  ambition.  Most  anxious  are 
we,  moreover, — and  in  this  we  believe  we  are  discharging 
both  a  priestly  and  a  patriotic  duty, — to  increase  tenfold  in 
every  one  of  these  dear  homes  their  precious  inheritance 
of  piety,  purity,  fear  of  God,  self-respect,  self-reliance,  and 
incorruptible  integrity.  Toward  this  we  shall  contribute 
not  a  little, — if  we  can  convince  all  minds  of  the  wholesome¬ 
ness  of  the  teaching  here  given. 

HOW  POOR  MOTHERS  MIGHT  BE  AIDED  BY  THEIR  WEALTHY 

SISTERS. 

The  home  of  the  really  poor ,  in  particular,  is  now  present 
to  our  mind,  as  well  as  the  need  which  the  mother,  in  such  a 
home,  has  of  the  efficient  co-operation  of  her  more  favored  sis¬ 
ters  in  fulfilling  the  duties  of  her  condition.  We  remember, 
during  a  brief  stay  at  Roxbury,  Massachusetts,  in  August, 
1860,  of  learning,  among  other  admirable  good  works  carried 
on  under  the  direction  of  the  Sisters  of  Notre  Dame,  of  their 
calling  together  on  Sunday  afternoons  the  poor  mothers 


182 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


of  families  who  stood  most  in  need  of  instruction,  direction, 
and  special  assistance  in  the  management  of  their  homes. 
The  good  Sisters  used  to  visit  them  on  week-days,  gently 
teaching  the  untaught  or  overworked  creatures  how  to  make 
every  thing  clean,  tidy,  and  bright  about  them ;  helping 
them  to  have  the  children  regular  in  their  attendance  at 
school,  neatly  dressed,  with  their  clothes  mended  and  all 
marks  of  degrading  poverty  removed ;  watching  over  the 
husband’s  good  conduct  and  his  fidelity  to  his  religious 
obligations ;  and,  especially,  aiding  every  wife  and  mother 
to  be  herself,  to  husband  and  children,  a  model  of  sobri¬ 
ety,  thrift,  and  gentleness.  It  was  a  most  admirable  good 
work.  Add  to  the  salutary  reform  thereby  effected  in  so 
many  homes,  the  influence  exercised  by  the  hundreds  of 
children  educated  in  the  incomparable  schools  of  that  edify¬ 
ing  sisterhood,  and  one  sees  at  a  glance  what  an  amount  of 
good  can  be  achieved  by  true  women  when  obeying  the  im¬ 
pulse  of  the  Divine  Spirit. 

The  sodalities  named  after  the  Holy  Family,  established 
in  Quebec  and  throughout  Canada  by  the  early  Jesuit  mis¬ 
sionaries,  had  a  purpose  not  very  dissimilar  to  this.  They 
were  chiefly,  if  not  solely,  composed  of  married  women,  who 
lent  a  tender  but  helpful  hand  to  their  poor,  sick,  or  over¬ 
burdened  sisters,  and  thus  secured  the  children  against  the 
evils  of  neglect,  ignorance,  and  dangerous  associations. 

Looking  abroad  over  this  great  and  growing  city  of  Hew 
York  and  its  adjacent  populous  cities,  and  counting  the 
many  thousand  needy  and  neglected  homes  to  which  some 
such  helpful  influences  as  this  would  be  most  timely,  or 
most  necessary, — we  ask  ourselves  what  could  not  associa¬ 
tions  of  married  ladies  in  the  largest  parishes,  or  in  every 
parish,  acting  in  co-operation  with  the  sisterhoods  who 
minister  to  the  needs  of  the  poor,  not  effect  under  God’s 
blessing  ? 

W e  must  endeavor  to  make  the  home  of  the  poor  laboring 
man  cleanly,  comfortable,  bright,  attractive,  and  happy,  for 
his  own  sake  as  for  that  of  his  grown-up  sons  and  daughters. 
We  must  exert  ourselves  to  aid  every  poor  mother  to  make 


HOW  POOR  MOTHERS  MIGHT  BE  AIDED. 


183 


her  home  such  that  her  husband  and  older  children  will 
love  it  and  prefer  it  to  any  other  place  on  work-days  as  well 
as  during  the  repose  of  the  Sunday. 

This  is  a  suggestion  made  with  all  diffidence  in  our  own 
judgment,  and  all  due  deference  to  the  judgments  and  senti¬ 
ments  of  others.  And  having  thus  explained  our  object  in 
submitting  the  f  oregoing  remarks  to  the  reader’ s  calm  Chris¬ 
tian  sense,  we  feel  more  confident  in  addressing  ourselves 
to  the  task  of  instructing  the  wives  of  the  mechanic  and  the 
laborer  in  their  motherly  office  toward  boyhood  and  girl¬ 
hood. 


CHAPTER  XII. 


THE  MOTHER’ S  OFFICE  TOWARD  BOYHOOD  AND  GIRLHOOD. 

O  little  feet,  that  such  long1  years 

Must  wander  on,  through  doubts  and  fears  ; 

Must  ache  and  bleed  beneath  your  load  ! 

I,  nearer  to  the  wayside  inn, 

Where  toil  shall  cease  and  rest  begin. 

Am  weary  thinking  of  your  road. 

O  little  hands,  that,  weak  or  strong. 

Have  still  to  serve  or  rule  so  long. 

Have  still  so  long  to  give  or  ask  ! 

I,  who  so  much  with  book  or  pen 
Have  toiled  among  my  fellow-men, 

Am  weary,  thinking  of  your  task.” 

Longfellow. 

THE  BOYS  AND  GIRLS  IN  THE  LABORER’S  HOME. 

Deep  as  ever  must  be  the  sympathy  of  a  priestly  heart 
for  both  parents  and  children  in  the  home  of  the  laboring 
man,  and  solicitous  as  every  true  priest  must  be  of  the 
future  of  these  little  ones  born  to  toil  and  hardship, — it  is 
principally  with  the  much-tried  father  and  mother  that  his 
concern  lies.  Theirs  is  the  hard  and  often  hopeless  battle 
of  the  present ;  and  worthy  of  the  admiration  of  men  and 
angels  is  the  struggle  they  make  to  keep  suffering  away 
from  their  nestful,  or  to  provide  for  their  dear  ones  com¬ 
forts,  education,  and  a  position  in  life  from  which  they  had 
themselves  been  debarred. 

We  do  not  mean  in  thought  and  affection  to  separate 
such  praiseworthy  parents  in  what  we  have  to  say ;  sure 

184 


COURAGE  AND  GENEROSITY  OF  LABORING  WOMEN.  185 


are  we,  that  every  father  will  bless  our  endeavor  to  make 
the  burden  of  the  laborious  mother  lighter,  her  task  more 
pleasant  and  easy,  and  her  every-day  path  of  duty  less  rug¬ 
ged  and  thorny.  It  is  the  feet  of  such  as  she  is  that  “  must 
ache  and  bleed  beneath”  her  load:  it  is  the  ever-busy 
hands  of  such  a  mother  that,  “  weak  or  strong,”  must  work 
at  her  unceasing  task  through  “  such  long  years  !  ” 

Nor,  near  as  the  writer  may  be  “to  the  wayside  inn,” 
shall  he  yield  to  any  sense  of  weariness  after  having 
“toiled  so  much  with  voice  and  pen,”  but  put  his  whole 
heart  in  his  present  effort  to  cheer  and  enlighten  so  many 
mothers  who  have  the  long  road  of  life  all  before  them. 


COUEAGE  AND  GENEEOSITY  OF  LABOEING  WOMEIST. 

• 

Those  only  who  have  gone  habitually  among  the  families 
of  our  laboring  classes,  who  have  their  full  confidence,  and 
are  initiated  into  all  their  secrets,  can  know  what  trea¬ 
sures  of  goodness,  of  generosity,  of  courage,  and  patience 
are  concealed  by  the  homely  or  patched  garb  of  a  mother 
with  five  or  six  mouths  to  feed,  and  not  always  a  dollar  a 
day  to  count  on  for  rent,  clothing,  and  other  incident  ex¬ 
penses  in  the  poorest  of  homes.  While  we  write  these 
lines,  such  is  the  outlook  in  the  households  of  most  labor¬ 
ing  men  of  this  great  metropolis  and  the  adjacent  cities. 
Such,  if  we  mistake  not,  is  the  hard  lot  of  most  fathers  and 
mothers  in  manufacturing  centers,  and  all  through  our  East¬ 
ern  States. 

And  this  has  been  the  condition  of  the  laboring  man 
among  us  for  years,  and  such  the  miserable  pittance  from 
out  which  his  wife  has  had  to  provide  necessaries  and  com¬ 
forts  for  the  entire  family,  with  something  also  for  the  poor 
and  the  church  !  If  persons  more  favored  by  fortune  and 
unvisited  by  such  pinching  want  as  is  described  in  this 
simple  statement,  ever  felt  disposed  to  blame  such  a  mother, 
or  to  turn  away  with  loathing  from  the  inevitable  squalor 
in  home  and  dress  and  countenance  of  these  toilers  for  ou? 
comfort  and  luxury,  let  them  pause  and  reflect. 


186 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


There  is  more  of  heroic  endurance  in  the  heart  of  such  a 
parent  than  in  the  bosom  of  the  bravest  soldier  in  a  belea¬ 
guered  and  famished  city.  There  is  in  such  a  life  of  inces¬ 
sant  battling  with  the  wants  of  the  day  and  the  hour,  with 
the  fears  of  what  the  morrow  may  bring  forth,  a  fortitude 
and  perseverance  far  above  our  sterile  admiration.  When 
one  has  seen  much  of  such  homes  and  such  hearts,  one  be¬ 
gins  to  understand  why  the  soul  of  the  Master  went  forth 
to  these  toilers,  with  this  sublime  exordium  of  his  first  re¬ 
corded  discourse:  “  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit:  for 
theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven  !  ’ 5  This  was  to  point  their 
eyes  heavenward  to  the  certain  prospect  of  a  rest  and  a  re¬ 
ward  which  the  present  could  not  afford.  But  He  would 
not  have  them  devoid,  amid  their  long  and  ever-recurring 
daily  struggle,  of  the  sweetest  consolation  and  most  coveted 
recompense  of  generous  souls.  4  ‘  Come  to  me,  all  you  that 
labor,  and  I  will  refresh  you  !  ” 

DIVINE  AID  IN  DIRE  NEED. 

In  such  a  family  and  during  a  long  and  severe  winter, 
when  labor  was  scarce,  provisions  dear,  and  charity  as  fro¬ 
zen  as  the  lakes  and  rivers,  a  poor  father  of  seven  children 
fell  on  the  ice,  while  returning  home  after  dark,  and  broke 
his  leg.  His  youngest  babe  was  but  six  weeks  old,  and  the 
mother  was  in  very  feeble  health.  It  was  thought,  inflam¬ 
mation  having  set  in,  that  the  fractured  member  would 
have  to  be  cut  off ;  but  the  poor  sufferer  would  not  consent 
to  the  operation  till  he  had  made  his  confession.  What  a 
spectacle  was  that  poor  home,  when  the  priest,  following 
the  oldest  child,  a  boy  of  eleven,  reached  the  door  at  mid¬ 
night  during  a  fierce  snow-storm  !  A  loft  or  garret  served 
as  a  sleeping-room  for  the  elder  children,  and  the  lower 
part  of  the  wooden  shanty  contained  a  little  kitchen  in 
front,  with  a  bedroom  for  father  and  mother  behind  it. 
There  were  three  physicians,  one  of  whom  was  a  surgeon, 
present  and  awaiting  impatiently  the  arrival  of  the  priest. 
The  house  was  a  picture  of  neatness,  and  the  bedroom 


DIVINE  AID  IN  DIRE  NEED. 


187 


especially,  in  which  the  poor  sufferer  lay,  was  like  an  ora¬ 
tory  curtained  with  spotless  white,  with  a  large  and  very 
old  engraving  of  Christ  carrying  his  cross,  by  Raphael,  over 
the  bed,  and  so  placed  that  the  patient  might  look  at  it. 
The  wife,  overcome  with  grief,  struggled,  hard,  when  the 
priest  entered,  to  keep  back  her  tears.  After  the  usual  salu¬ 
tations  and  a  few  words  of  comfort  to  herself  and  her  hus¬ 
band,  the  latter,  seizing  the  priest’ s  hand,  exclaimed,  as  he 
looked  toward  the  picture  :  “Father,  I  know  that  He  will  be 
with  me  and  with  her,  too  !  That  beautiful  face  has  been 
like  a  book  to  me  for  many  a  year  :  I  could  look  on  it  for¬ 
ever  !  But,  sure  I  know” — and  the  speaker’s  voice  trem¬ 
bled  with  emotion — “that  the  real  face  is  more  beautiful 
than  the  sun,  and  that  the  heart  we  were  all  taught  to  come 
to  is  one  that  will  pity  the  poor  man,  .  .  .  and  the 
widow,  .  .  .  (here  he  broke  down)  .  .  .  and  the 
little  orphans.”  Even  the  stern  face  of  the  surgeon  quiv¬ 
ered  with  an  emotion  he  could  not  suppress,  while  these 
sentiments  were  uttered  in  a  firm,  low  tone. 

During  the  operation,  the  children  were  taken  to  a  neigh-  , 
boring  house,  all  but  the  infant,  which  remained  with  its 
mother,  and  she  could  not  be  persuaded  to  leave  the  house, 
praying  in  the  outside  room  with  one  of  the  neighboring 
women.  Ether  was  then  in  common  use,  but  the  sick  man 
would  not  take  it :  he  held,  instead,  the  priest’s  crucifix  in 
both  hands,  which  the  physicians  left  free,  and  with  his 
eyes  intently  fixed  on  the  thorn-crowned  head,  while  the 
inner  sight  seemed  to  behold  somewhat  of  the  divine 
reality, — the  sufferer  gave  himself  up  to  the  surgeon.  Not 
a  murmur  or  sigh  escaped  the  silently  moving  lips,  till 
toward  the  end,  when  the  pain  wrung  one  groan  from  him 
and  his  head  fell  back  in  a  swoon  on  the  priest’ s  shoulder. 

A  few  days  afterward  a  crisis  came,  and  the  worst 
was  feared.  The  last  sacraments  were  administered, — the 
wife  seeming  to  have  gained  sudden  and  preternatural 
strength  from  the  very  extremity  to  which  her  brave  hus¬ 
band  was  reduced.  “She  knew” — she  assured  the  priest 
ere  he  left  the  house — “that  God  would  not  try  her  fur- 


188 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


ther  :  something  whispered  to  her  heart  that  her  good  man 
would  be  left  to  her.”  He  was,  as  usual,  heroic  in  his  calm 
submission  to  the  Divine  Will ;  only, — such  were  his  words, 
— he  prayed  to  be  left  a  little  longer  with  his  young  children. 
The  picture  (“The  Spasimo”  of  Raphael)  had  been  taken 
down  from  the  wall  and  lay  on  the  white  covering  of  the 
bed,  and  the  beautiful  face  of  the  humiliated  Redeemer 
was  the  book  in  which  the  sick  man  read  night  and  day. 

WHAT  THE  HEAVENLY  PHYSICIAN  DID. 

The  next  morning  the  priest  returned,  expecting  to  hear 
that  all  was  over.  But,  to  his  unspeakable  surprise,  the 
wife  met  him  on  the  threshold  with  countenance  all  aglow 
with  rapturous  gratitude,  and.  said  that  her  husband  was 
better,  “Oh!  so  much  better!”  It  was  wonderful.  The 
patient  had  slept  sweetly, — had  even  lost  consciousness 
while  gazing  at  his  loved  picture, — and  dreamed  that  Christ 
had  come  to  him  as  he  lay  sore  and  weary  and  faint  by  the 
roadside,  and  had  smiled  on  him,  blessed  him,  and  shown 
him  the  gap  in  His  own  side,  and  then  disappeared. 

So,  when  the  burden  was  heaviest  on  these  stricken  ones, 
He  who  bade  us  go  to  him  in  our  extremity,  and  who 
yearns  to  reward  our  faith  even  by  miracles  when  needful, 
had  stretched  out  his  hand  and  opened  his  heart  to  the  call 
of  that  husband  and  that  wife. 

Theirs  was  a  long  and  a  brave  battle  thenceforward.  But 
every  trial  seemed  light  to  souls  so  near  to  God.  The  brave 
man  applied  himself  to  learn  a  trade — he  had  been  hitherto 
a  stevedore — and  though  there  was  never  surplus  of  money 
or  of  creature-comforts  in  that  home, — there  was  content¬ 
ment,  and  love  purified  in  the  furnace,  and  noble  children 
to  gladden  the  hearts  of  struggling  parents,  and  that  piety 
which  seemed  as  natural  as  the  very  air  they  breathed. 

TREASURES  TO  BE  FOUND  IN  THE  POOREST  HOMES. 

Yes, — there  are  poor  homes,  laborious  homes,  where  from 
earliest  dawn  till  night,  and  often  far  into  the  night,  the 


TEACH  TOUR  CHILDREN  THE  DIGNITY  OF  LABOR.  189 

wife  and  mother  has  to  work,  work,  w^ork,  without  cessa¬ 
tion  or  repose,  to  do  the  housework,  and,  that  done,  to 
complete  some  other  task  from  the  outside  in  order  to  help 
the  ill-paid  husband  to  keep  off  or  pay  off  debts,  to  have 
decent  raiment  for  the  good  man  and  his  children,  to  keep 
some  at  least  of  these  at  school,  to  have  substantial  food  for 
all,  and  something  for  the  need  of  the  suffering  poor  who 
know  well  her  door  as  well  as  her  heart : — and  such  mothers 
believe  that  God’ s  eye  is  ever  on  themselves  and  their  dear 
ones,  that  his  blessed  angels  are  there  counting  every  hour 
and  minute  of  that  loving  toil,  counting  every  beat  of  these 
generous  hearts,  every  moment  so  well  filled, — and  ascend¬ 
ing  at  night  to  lay  the  record  of  such  a  day  before  Him  who 
said,  “Blessed  are  the  poor!  .  .  .  For  theirs  is  the* 

kingdom  of  heaven  !  ” 

Blood  tells,  it  is  said,  when  noble  deeds  are  to  be  per¬ 
formed, — that  is,  perhaps,  when  the  eyes  of  men  watch  the 
performance  :  but  there  is  inherited  piety,  which  is  a  some¬ 
thing  nobler  still, — the  supernatural  piety  of  Christians. 
Are  we  not  born,  in  our  second  sacramental  birth,  of  the 
blood  of  a  God-man  %  Think  of  this,  brave-hearted  mothers, 
and  remember  it  is  that  blood  which  is  applied  to  us  in 
every  grace  we  receive,  and  which  strengthens  us  to  do  the 
work  before  us. 

Your  boys,  your  girls  must  be  trained  early  to  be  indus¬ 
trious.  JSTot  that  they  must  be  set  to  work  before  their 
time  ;  God  forbid  !  But  it  must  be  your  care  to  give  them, 
from  the  very  beginning,  habits  of  cleanliness,  order,  indus¬ 
try,  self-respect  and  self-reliance.  You  must  be  careful  not 
to  allow  them  to  fancy  for  one  moment  that  there  is  in 
your  own  laborious  habits  or  in  their  father’ s  occupation  or 
trade,  any  thing  that  is  not  most  honorable,  praiseworthy, 
and  pleasing  to  God. 

TEACH  YOUR  CHILDREN  THE  DIGNITY  OF  LABOR. 

Recall  to  them  frequently  that  the  most  glorious  names 
in  heaven  or  on  earth  were  those  of  men  and  women  whose 


190 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


daily  life  was  one  of  toil  like  your  own :  how  Adam  and  the 
great  patriarchs  who  succeeded  him  were  tillers  of  the  soil, 
husbandmen,  and  shepherds  ;  that  such  were  the  great  men 
and  women  who  founded  God’s  people  in  the  Old  Law, 
Abraham  and  Sara,  Isaac  and  Rebecca,  Israel  (or  Jacob)  and 
his  wife  Rachel,  Joseph  who  ruled  Egypt  after  having  been 
like  his  brothers  a  farmer  and  a  shepherd,  as  well  as  Moses, 
the  figure  of  our  Lord,  who  kept  the  flocks  of  his  father-in- 
law.  Labor  was  most  honored  always  down  to  the  days  of 
our  Lord,  who  himself  learned  the  carpenter’s  trade  and 
worked  at  it  with  his  foster-father,  Joseph, — a  prince  of  the 
royal  blood  of  David. 

Teach  them  to  look  upon  idleness  as  a  shame  and  dis¬ 
grace,  upon  sloth  as  most  degrading,  and  as  leading  to  all 
manner  of  evil  courses.  You  can  always  keep  them  joyous 
children,  while  you  make  them  industrious  and  laborious 
children  ;  you  can  make  them  and  keep  them  bright,  pleas¬ 
ant-faced,  and  cheerful  while  coaxing  them  to  learn  some¬ 
thing  new  every  day  and  to  apply  themselves  heartily  to 
the  tasks  you  set  for  them  at  the  appointed  hours. 

KNOW  HOW  TO  PRAISE  THEM. 

We  have  already  seen  what  good  a  true  wife  can  do  by 
praising  generously  and  judiciously  her  husband,  and  en¬ 
couraging  him  thereby  to  rise  every  day  higher  and  higher 
in  her  esteem  and  in  his  own.*  Far  greater  is  the  good  she 
can  do  every  one  of  her  children  by  judicious  praise.  We 
say  “  judicious  ;  ”  for  praise  bestowed  at  every  moment  and 
for  trifles  loses  its  value  by  becoming  common.  Praise  only 
when  something  is  done  which  deserves  it,  and  praise  in 
well-weighed  words.  Never  give  praise  when  it  is  not  well 
deserved  :  for  then  it  would  be  unjust,  and  you  would  make 
your  children  suspect  your  truthfulness  and  your  honesty. 

BE  GENTLE,  LOW-VOICED,  AND  PATIENT. 

Be  gentle.  That  does  not  mean  to  be  spiritless.  It  means 


*  See  Chapter  VI.,  pp.  GO,  61,  G2,  and  63  ;  and  Chapter  X.,  p.  1G0 


BE  GENTLE,  LOW-VOICED,  AND  PATIENT.  191 

to  be  the  opposite  of  violent,  irascible,  ill-tempered,  and 
moody.  Study  to  be  so,  for  your  own  soul’s  sake,  and  as  if 
you  lived  in  God’ s  presence,  always  keeping  down  for  his 
holy  love  every  movement  of  anger,  irritability,  ill-temper, 
or  moodiness.  And  be  gentle, — precisely  because  you  have 
much  to  do,  much  to  bear,  many  cares  to  burden  you,  many 
things  which  continually  try  your  temper. 

Be  low- voiced.  It  is  wonderful  what  effect  a  mother’s 
gentle  manner  and  low  voice, — when  she  teaches,  or  cor¬ 
rects,  or  praises, — will  have  on  a  band  of  children.  Take  a 
school-room  filled  with  very  young  boys  or  girls.  Let  their 
teacher  be  nervous,  fidgety,  and  irritable ;  you  will  see 
all  these  little  ones  thrown  into  a  ferment  and  fever  and 
agitation,  which  is  nothing  more  than  a  kind  of  disorder 
which  they  catch  from  the  teacher’s  manner.  Let  her  be 
loud-voiced,  teaching  or  speaking  in  loud,  quick,  nervous 
tones,  and  it  is  ten  to  one  but  you  will  see  within  a  few 
minutes  all  these  children  becoming  restless,  talkative,  inat¬ 
tentive,  and  ungovernable. 

Now,  let  some  quiet,  gentle,  calm-mannered,  and  low¬ 
voiced  person  come  in,  and  all  these  children  will  become 
quieted,  stop  talking,  listen,  and  be  ready  to  give  their 
whole  attention  to  what  is  said,  or  to  set  to  work,  and  work 
steadily  as  long  as  the  calm  eye  is  on  them  and  the  gentle, 
low  voice  is  directing  them. 

You  will  spare  yourselves  and  your  dear  ones  much  trouble 
and  much  unhappiness  by  laying  this  lesson  to  heart.  You 
can  do  what  you  like  with  them, — if  you  are  perfectly  mis¬ 
tress  of  yourself.  Besides,  wliat  a  service  you  do  them ; 
and  how  they  will  bless  their  mother  in  after  life  for  having 
taught  them  this  gentleness  ! 

Be  patient.  N ot  only  when  you  are  suffering  from  aching 
limbs  and  head  and  heart,  but  when  you  do  not  succeed  in 
making  your  dear  ones  all  that  you  would  wish.  There  are 
certain  dispositions  and  characters  which  seem  naturally  to 
defy  all  control,  or  teaching,  or  improvement.  They  will 
learn  more  than  you  think  ;  and  they  profit  much  more 
than  you  can  see  by  your  lessons,  and  especially  by  your 


192 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


example.  Even  should  son  or  daughter  of  yours  turn  out 
to  be  every  thing  but  what  you  trained  them  to  be,  the  mem¬ 
ory  of  their  gentle,  patient,  loving  mother  will  remain  in  their 
souls  to  their  dying  day,  like  a  silent  voice  from  the  past  bid¬ 
ding  them  return  to  God  and  to  the  paths  of  their  childhood. 

Some  say  that  steel  beaten  into  its  due  form  and  given  a 
keen  edge  while  cold,  is  more  apt  to  preserve  both  form  and 
edge  forever.  So  is  it  with  the  temper  your  patient  gentle¬ 
ness  will  impart  to  your  children’s  s.ouls.  •  And  this  firm¬ 
ness,  which  is  only  one  of  the  most  precious  dispositions 
of  true  manhood  and  womanhood,  will  be  both  of  infinite 
value  to  them  and  of  indispensable  necessity. 

IN  WHAT  CONSISTS  TRUE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  CHARACTER. 

To  no  one  more  than  the  child  of  the  hard-working  mo¬ 
ther  is  true  independence  of  soul, — that  is,  true  nobility 
of  character, — necessary  and  useful.  Indeed,  the  all-seeing 
Author  of  our  nature,  who  governs  all  our  ways,  has  made 
every  element  of  greatness  in  our  souls  and  conduct  neces¬ 
sary  because  he  knew  they  would  be  useful ;  and  he  made 
them  all  the  more  necessary  that  he  foresaw  they  would 
be  more  useful. 

In  what  does  this  independence  of  soul  and  character  con¬ 
sist  %  In  this :  that  a  boy  or  a  girl  brought  up  by  a  truly 
God-fearing  mother,  is  so  filled  with  the  fear  of  that  Great 
Majesty,  in  whose  hands  we  are  at  every  moment,  and  into 
whose  hands  we  are  sure  to  fall  after  death,  that  they  look 
up  to  Him  in  every  thing,  seek  to  please  him  in  all  they  do, 
and  find  it  impossible  to  do  any  thing  which  is  wrong  in  his 
sight  and  contrary  to  the  voice  of  their  own  conscience. 

Let  us  understand  this  well.  You  rear  your  boy  and 
your  girl,  from  the  very  first  moment  you  can  make  them 
understand  any  thing,  in  the  conviction  that  God’s  truth, 
God’s  word,  God's  will  is  to  be  the  sole  measure  by  which 
they  are  to  weigh  and  estimate  every  thing  ;  so  that  it  will 
be  practically  impossible  for  them  to  do  any  thing  contrary 
to  his  truth,  his  law,  or  his  will.  We  say  every  day  that 


DEPENDING  ON  GOD  ALONE. 


193 


such  a  man  is  a  noble  man,  a  truly  independent  man,  be¬ 
cause  he  is  incapable  of  doing  wrong  to  any  one,  of  violating 
truth  or  honor  or  honesty,  of  going  in  any  thing  whatever 
against  his  conscience  and  his  known  duty. 

Hence  it  is — and  this  is  the  golden  lesson  which  our  fore¬ 
fathers  learned  so  well  and  practiced  so  nobly,  that  they 
made  their  moral  greatness  and  independence  consist 

IN  DEPENDING  ON  GOD  ALONE  AND  THEIR  CONSCIENCE. 

They  were  poor  in  this  world’s  goods, — for  they  had  been' 
stripped  of  every  thing, — they  were  deprived  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty  and  honor,  and  were  thus,  in  the  eyes  of 
men,  degraded  to  the  level  of  the  serf  or  the  slave.  But 
nothing  could  shake  their  dependence  on  God,  or  their  im¬ 
plicit  and  invincible  obedience  to  the  voice  of  their  con¬ 
science  and  their  faith. 

How  such  are  the  noble  men  and  women  that  can  in  our 
days, — in  this  generation  as  in  the  next, — go  forth  from  the 
home  of  every  laboring  man  among  us,  as  they  went  forth 
in  past  generations ;  men  attached  to  conscience,  to  hon¬ 
esty,  to  honor,  to  truth,  to  duty,  to  righteousness,  and  to 
God  in  all  things  and  above  all  things,  everywhere,  in  all 
employments  and  positions,  though  never  so  high  or  never 
so  lowly. 

Let  us  have  men  and  women  incapable  of  telling  a  lie,  of 
wronging  the  neighbor  in  thought  or  word  or  deed,  of  wrong¬ 
ing  their  employer  in  the  meanest  trifles  or  the  weightiest 
matters,  of  betraying  the  trust  placed  in  them,  whether  in 
the  last  place  in  lowliest  office  or  in  the  highest  that  can  be 
given  in  city,  State,  or  Church  ;  men  and  women  who  fear 
God  alone,  and,  after  him,  fear  only  what  is  contrary  to 
truth,  honor,  and  purity  ! 

Hear  mothers  who  read  this,  you  may  never  be  able  to 
give  your  boys  and  girls  at  your  death  wherewith  to  buy  a 
suit  of  clothes  or  to  pay  for  their  meals  on  the  morrow. 
But  if  you  labored  morning,  noon,  and  night  till  your  dy¬ 
ing  day — because  you  would  allow  no  dishonesty  to  taint 
13 


194 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


your  lives,  and  for  the  sole  purpose  of  making  of  your 
children  such  godlike  men  and  women  as  this, — you  have 
left  them  a  treasure  ten  thousand  times  more  precious  than 
all  the  hoarded  millions  of  our  wealthiest. 

MAKE  THEM  CHOOSE  THEIR  COMPANIONS  WELL. 

In  order  to  do  this,  you  must  be  careful  about  two  things : 
the  choice  of  what  your  boys  and  girls  read,  and  that  of 
their  companions  at  home  or  in  the  street. 

*  Choose  well  the  books  which  you  put  in  their  hands,  or 
which  you  permit  them  to  bring  home  with  them.  Public 
libraries  are  like  druggists’  shops  or  public  dispensaries ; 
they  are  like  them  in  this,  that  they  contain  all  manner  of 
poisons  as  well  as  healthful  medicines ;  and  they  differ  from 
them  in  this,  that,  whereas  conscientious  druggists  will  give 
what  is  healthful  to  all,  they  will  only  deal  out  what  is 
poisonous  in  small  quantities  and  to  responsible  and  pro¬ 
perly  authorized  persons  ; — while  libraries  and  librarians 
have  no  conscience,  and  let  the  innocent  child  take  away 
and  devour  what  kills  purity,  innocence,  and  conscience 
forever. 

Scarcely  less  baneful  are,  taken  and  read  promiscuously, 
the  daily  and  weekly  papers.  They  are  not  only  dangerous 
and  hurtful  to  the  young  mind  and  heart  as  ipere  newspa¬ 
pers,  because  they  reveal  in  their  hideousness  and  obscenity 
what  should  never  be  known  to  youth,  and  what  were  better 
ignored  by  age  itself  ;  but  they  are  still  more  hurtful  as 
teachers  and  dogmatizers  on  religion  and  morality,  either 
reducing  the  doctrines  and  practices  of  revealed  religion  to 
the  same  level  with  infidelity,  and  thus  producing  practical 
indifference  toward  divine  truth  ;  or  they  affect  and  profess 
to  have  an  authority  which  can  judge  the  Church  of  Christ 
herself,  and  enlighten  her  as  to  the  way  she  ought  to  teach 
and  to  govern. 

Thereby  the  mind  is  imperceptibly  but  inevitably  filled 
with  prejudices  or  preconceived  opinions  distrustful  of  the 
Church  or  hostile  to  her,  and  which  act  on  the  intelligence 


THE  TWO  NESTS. 


195 


as  the  foul  and  poisonous  air  of  coal-mines  acts  on  the 
lungs :  they  fill  the  organs  with  deadly  exhalations  which 
prevent  the  entrance  into  them  of  God’ s  pure  vital  air. 

Just  as  you  are  careful  of  wdiat  books  or  papers  your 
children  read,  even  so  be  watchful  over  the  companionships 
they  form.  It  is  impossible  to  take  kindly  to  the  low- 
minded,  corrupt-hearted,  or  ill-bred  and  ill-mannered,  with¬ 
out  laying  aside  one’ s  own  good  manners,  good  breeding, 
purity  of  feeling,  and  innocence  of  mind  in  habitual  inter¬ 
course  with  them.  There  are  worse  consequences,  as  you 
know,  which  soon  follow  this  familiarity  with  the  low  and 
the  unworthy. 

Precisely  because  the  great  majority  of  young  people 
around  you  are  without  sound  moral  education, — untruth¬ 
ful,  intemperate,  and  as  careless  of  honor  and  honesty  as 
they  are  of  decency, — it  is  your  most  pressing  interest  and 
duty  to  keep  your  treasures  away  from  such  contact. 

i 

the  two  invests. 

Do  not  seek,  while  you  are  struggling  against  poverty,  or 
even  when  you  have  reached  a  comfortable  competency,  to 
expose  your  home  to  the  eyes  of  your  richer  neighbors,  or 
to  seek  their  children  as  companions  for  your  own.  But 
take  well  to  heart  the  lesson  of  the  following  parable  : 

“  A  nest  there  was  in  a  bonnie  May  tree. 

In  the  fairest  of  fairy  bowers  ; 

And  methought  how  happy  the  bird  -must  be. 

On  her  nest  amid  the  flowers. 

But  the  children  came,  and  together  they  vied 
Who  should  pluck  the  best  branches  of  May  ; 

And  the  bird’s  little  nest  very  quickly  they  spied, 

And  they  ruthlessly  bore  it  away  ! 

**  A  nest  there  was  in  a  dreary  tree, 

In  a  dark  and  dismal  holly  ; 

And  methought  how  weary  the  bird  must  be 
Of  her  nest  so  melancholy. 

But  the  children  came,  and  they  passed  it  by 
To  rifle  a  fairer  tree  ; 

And  the  bird  in  the  holly  I  then  confess’d 
The  wiser  bird  to  be. 


196 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


“  In  the  forest  of  life  two  different  glades 
Are  lying  before  me  to  tread. 

Shall  I  push  my  way  through  the  darker  shades. 

Or  follow  the  flowers  instead? 

I  will  think  of  the  bird  and  her  nestlings’  doom. 

And  keep  to  the  lonelier  way, — 

Lest  enemies  come  where  the  fair  flowers  bloom. 

And  carry  my  treasures  away.”  * 

As  you  would  not  go  beneath,  you  for  the  ill-bred  and  the 
vicious,  so  must  you  avoid  allowing  your  children  to  choose 
their  companions  and  friends  above  them.  This  would  be 
to  show  a  want  of  that  proper  self-respect,  self-reliance,  and 
independence  which  we  have  just  been  praising  as  in  them¬ 
selves  a  fortune.  It  would,  by  giving  your  children  a  desire 
to  enter  the  atmosphere  of  a  wealthy  and  luxurious  home, 
tempt  them  to  despise  their  own  home,  to  be  dissatisfied 
with  their  condition,  with  their  parentage,  their  education, 
their  labors, — their  whole  existence'.  This  temptation  is  a 
terrible  one, — in  a  country  such  as  ours  especially,  where 
birth  and  hereditary  rank  do  not  place  between  the  poor 
and  laboring  classes  and  the  wealthy  above  them,  the  sepa¬ 
ration  walls  existing  in  European  countries.  But  only  think 
of  what  misery  for  you  and  what  ruin  for  your  children  the 
temptation  yielded  to  would  be  sure  to  work  ! 

Besides, — and  apart  from  the  despising  of  the  old  home 
and  the  being  ashamed  of  father  and  mother, — this  intimacy 
and  companionship  with  the  children  of  wealthy  parents 
would  beget  other  temptations  and  dangers.  Companions, 
like  friends,  wish  to  dress  alike  and  to  be  able  to  spend 
alike.  Hence  the  road  open  to  the  approach  of  that  Evil 
One  who  prompts  to  steal  in  order  to  gratify  vanity,  or  to 
enjoy  the  pleasures  accessible  to  one’s  friends. 


*  Claribel. 


t 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

HOW  MOTHERS  SHOULD  TRAIN  THEIR  BOYS  AND  GIRLS 

(CONTINUED.) 

Early  in  years,  and  yet  more  infantine 
In  figure,  she  had  something  of  sublime 
In  eyes  which  sadly  shone,  as  seraphs’  shine  : 

All  youth — but  with  an  aspect  beyond  time  ; 

Radiant  and  grave,  as  pitying  man’s  decline  ; 

Mournful,  but  mournful  of  another’s  crime. 

She  looked  as  if.  she  sat  by  Eden’s  door, 

And  grieved  for  those  who  could  return  no  more. 

She  was  a  Catholic,  too,  sincere,  austere 
As  far  as  her  own  gentle  heart  allowed, 

And  deemed  that  fallen  worship  far  more  dear 
Because  ’twas  fallen  ;  her  sires  were  proud 
Of  deeds  and  days  when  they  had  filled  the  ear 
Of  nations,  and  had  never  bent  or  bowed 
To  novel  power  ;  and,  as  she  was  the  last, 

She  held  their  old  faith  and  old  feelings  fast. 

She  gazed  upon  a  world  she  scarcely  knew. 

As  seeking  not  to  know  it ;  silent,  lone. 

As  grows  a  flower,  thus  silently  she  grew. 

And  kept  her  heart  serene  within  its  zone. 

There  was  awe  in  the  homage  which  she  drew  ; 

Her  spirit  seemed  as  seated  on  a  throne 
Apart  from  the  surrounding  world,  and  strong 
In  its  own  strength — most’ strange  in  one  so  young. 

Byron. 

Such,  in  many  respects,  will  be  the  ideal  form  which 
will  be  present  to  the  reader’s  mind  in  perusing  this  and 
the  succeeding  chapter. 

The  best  preservative  against  the  dangerous  ambition  de¬ 
scribed  in  our  last,  is  found  in  the  supernatural  notions  and 

197 


198 


TEE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


virtues  which  a  Christian  mother  is  careful  to  inculcate 
from  the  earliest  dawn  of  reason  in  her  children.  We  insist 
once  more  upon  it — the  royal  and  rich  poverty  of  Christ, 
of  his  Mother,  and  of  his  foster-father  Joseph,  must  be 
made  the  theme  of  constant  remark  and  praise  in  the  homes 
of  tradesmen  and  laboring  men.  And,  next  to  that,  the 
mother  must  till  the  souls  of  her  little  ones  with  that  scorn 
and  loathing  of  all  dishonesty  and  untruthfulness,  which 
will,  with  the  ever-present  aid  of  grace,  render  them  inca¬ 
pable  of  telling  a  lie  or  wronging  any  person,  no  matter  how 
slignuy. 

CHILDREN  TO  BE  TAUGHT  SIMPLICITY  IN  DRESS  AND 

SOBRIETY  IN  FOOD. 

This  is  another  golden  rule  to  be  enforced  early.  Nor 
need  we,  while  the  passion  for  rich  attire,  showy  orna¬ 
ments,  and  jewelry  is  developed  so  precociously  in  our  girls, 
and  allowed  by  mothers  to  grow  unrepressed  and  unre¬ 
buked, — point  out  how  timely  and  needful  this  rule  is. 

A  venerable  lady,  who  died  in  November,  1870,  in  her 
seventy-second  year,  and  who  came  of  the  best  blood  of 
England,  wrote  thus,  in  her  last  years,  of  her  early  training : 
‘  ‘  The  dress  of  these  days  (about  1806)  was  very  different  to 
that  which  children  have  now.  My  white  frocks  were  of 
lawn  or  Irish  cloth,  without  any  work  or  ornament ;  and 
when  I  went  out,  I  used  to  wear  a  little  green-baize  coat. 
My  food  was  also  of  the  simplest  kind,  consisting  princi¬ 
pally  of  buttermilk  and  potatoes.”  * 

The  girlhood  trained  in  these  habits  of  simplicity  and 
wholesome  austerity  led  to  a  lovely  womanhood,  to  a  life 
of  spotless  devotion  to  duty,  and  to  the  exercise  of  these 
private  graces  and  influences  which  enable  a  woman,  ever 
living  in  the  privacy  of  her  home,  to  win  the  admiration, 
the  respect,  and  the  veneration  of  all  who  approach  her. 
W e  quote  her  words  and  her  example  to  show  how  women 
were  brought  up  in  the  days  of  our  fathers,  and  how  little 


*  Augustus  J.  C.  Hare,  “Memorials  of  a  Quiet  Life,”  vol.  i.,  p.  6. 


THE  SENSE  OF  DUTY  FOUND  IN  CHILDREN. 


199 


difference,  even  in  Protestant  homes,  the  deep-seated  Chris¬ 
tian  customs  of  so  many  preceding  centuries  allowed  to 
prevail  in  the  dress,  the  food,  and  all  the  external  training 
of  children  in  all  classes. 

Mothers  in  those  days,  who  wished  to  do  their  duty  con¬ 
scientiously  by  their  children,  did  not  dream  of  having  for 
them  in  the  beginning  any  teachers  but  themselves.  So  was 
it  with  this  lady’ s  mother  ;  although  prostrated  by  paraly¬ 
sis  and  consumption,  she  would  daily  teach  her  little  girl. 

44  She  taught  me  in  all  my  lessons  except  French,  but  her 
weak  health  and  bad  headaches  often  prevented  her  hear¬ 
ing  me,  and  many  a  time  I  had  to  stand  outside  her  door 
waiting  till  I  could  be  heard,  which  fretted  me  a  good  deal. 
When  the  lessons  went  ill,  I  was  sentenced  to  sit  on  the 
staircase  till  I  was  good,  and  the  task  perfect.  I  imagine 
that  though  my  mother  was  most  gentle,  she  was  firm  in 
her  management  of  me.”  Some  lady-friend  having  44  sug¬ 
gested  my  doing  something  because  it  would  be  pleasant, 
my  mother  appealed  to  me,  4 1  think  my  little  girl  has  a 
better  motive  for  it.  What  is  it,  Mia  \  ’  and  4  Because  it  is 
right, ’  was  my  reply.”  * 

HOW  EARLY  THE  SENSE  OF  DUTY — OF  RIGHT  AND  WRONG, 

IS  FOUND  IN  CHILDREN. 

The  answer  given  by  the  child  shows  how  early  what 
philosophers  call  44  the  moral  sense”  is  developed  in  a 
child,  in  little  girls  especially,  whose  intelligence  is  so 
much  more  precocious  than  that  of  boys,  and  whose  sense 
of  right  and  wrong  is  much  quicker  and  keener.  The  sick, 
— hopelessly  sick  and  infirm  mother,  here  mentioned,  while 
cultivating  her  child’ s  memory  and  understanding  by  teach¬ 
ing  her  the  usual  elementary  branches,  was  careful  to  form 
her  judgment  by  making  her  in  all  things  act  for  a  pur¬ 
pose,  and  to  develop  her  moral  sense  by  giving  her  in  all 
she  did  the  notion  of  duty,  as  her  stimulant  in  doing  both 
pleasant  and  unpleasant  things. 


*  Ibidem,  p.  4. 


200 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


THE  MORAL  SENSE  IS  BUT  THE  SENSE  OF  DUTY. 

Duty  is  the  fulfilling  of  an  obligation  toward  one’s  self, 
or  toward  another  in  compliance  with  His  will,  who  being 
Creator  and  Lord  has  a  right  to  bind  our  wills  to  do  certain 
things  and  to  refrain  from  others. 

Duty  is  always  toward  God,  even  when  the  immediate 
object  of  the  action  performed  is  only  one’s  self,  or  one’s 
neighbor.  The  very  duty  of  cultivating  mind  and  heart, 
which  regards  every  intelligent  being,  is  a  duty  imposed  by 
the  Divine  Will ;  so  is  the  obligation  to  keep  one’s  soul  and 
body  free  from  every  defilement.  We  own  it  to  be  a  duty 
to  learn,  to  know  clearly  and  fully  what  concerns  our  con¬ 
dition,  our  profession,  or  the  office  we  may  hold  in  Church 
or  State,  and  a  corresponding  duty  to  live  up  to  this  indis¬ 
pensable  knowledge.  But  Christian  philosophy  teaches  us 
that  in  acquiring  this  knowledge,  and  in  acting  up  to  it,  we 
are  only  doing  what  is  due  to  Him  who  has  an  essential 
right  to  every  thought  and  aim  and  act  of  ours. 

Uprightness  is  the  perfect  performance  of  duty  ; — and 
uprightness,  in  its  Christian  and  supernatural  meaning,  is 
the  perfect  discharge  of  duty  in  view  of  Him  who  is  our 
Lord  and  Judge  and  final  Beatitude.  The  firm  look  of  the 
soul,  in  every  act  of  duty  or  in  the  gratuitous  generosity 
with  which  the  sons  of  God  go  beyond  what  is  of  obligation 
— is  upward  to  God. 

CULTIVATE  THIS  SENSE  OF  DUTY 

in  all  your  children.  Make  them  understand  that  they  are 
to  do  certain  things  most  unpleasant,  and  to  abstain  from 
other  things  most  pleasant,  because#  is  right  to  do  so; 
because  it  is  their  duty ,  because  this  is  due  to  their  great 
and  good  God.  Experience  has  taught  that  of  all  charac¬ 
ters,  in  men  as  well  as  in  women,  the  most  trustworthy,  the 
most  honored,  the  most  noble  in  the  estimation  of  mankind, 
is  the  man  or  woman  who  always  acts  according  to  this 
sense  of  duty,  and  whom  no  love,  no  fear,  no  passion,  or 


CULTIVATE  THE  HEARTS  OF  YOUR  CHILDREN.  201 


temptation  can  turn  aside  to  do  wrong, — that  is,  what  is 
contrary  to  duty  and  conscience. 

If  mothers  will  only  accustom  their  children  to  act,  not 
according  to  their  inclinations,  but  in  obedience  to  this  sense 
of  duty,  pointing  out  what  is  right  to  do  and  what  is  wrong 
not  to  do, — they  will  buckle  round  them  a  suit  of  armor 
which  will  enable  them  to  come  victorious  out  of  the  terrible 
battle  of  temptation.  And  never  was  this  noble  sense  of 
duty  more  needed  than  in  our  day, — when  men  think  little 
of  right  or  wrong,  and  a  good  deal  of  the  surest  and  quick¬ 
est  road  to  success  ; — and  when,  in  the  estimation  of  our 
public,  success  once  attained  makes  the  wrong  right,  while 
failure  makes  right  itself  wrong,  and  the  sacrifice  to  duty 
foolish  sentimentality. 

CULTIVATE  THE  HEAETS  OF  YOUE  CHILDEEX. 

This  is  more  particularly  needful  in  the  case  of  your  girls. 

It  is  by  the  right  or  wrong  in  their  affections  that  women 
become  so  powerful  for  good  or  evil.  Not  that  their  intelli¬ 
gence  is  naturally  inferior  to  that  of  men, — on  the  contrary, 
in  many  respects  the  female  intellect  is  remarkably  superior. 
Intelligence  dawns  earlier  in  girls  and  ripens  at  a  very  pre¬ 
cocious  age.  Hence  the  wisdom  of  cultivating  the  judgment 
and  forming  the  imagination  of  girls  during  their  fifth, 
sixth,  and  seventh  years.  One  will  often  be  astonished  in 
conversing  with  a  little  girl  of  that  age,  on  questioning  her 
closely,  to  see  (when  she  has  been  carefully  watched  by  an 
intelligent  and  virtuous  mother)  how  completely  she  will 
master  the  great  scheme  of  the  creation,  the  fall,  the  re¬ 
demption  and  reparation,  the  necessity  of  a  visible  and  in¬ 
fallible  teaching  authority,  the  beauty  of  the  sacramental 
system  of  help  toward  all  the  purposes  of  the  supernatural 
life  in  the  individual  soul  as  well  as  in  the  body  of  the 
Church.  All  this  can  be  made  so  clear  and  so  attractive  to 
the  childish  intellect,  without  wearying  it  with  theological 
terms  or  definitions. 

The  idea  of  God  is  connatural  to  the  mind,  as  well  as  that 


202 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


of  his  providence,  of  moral  good  and  evil,  of  rewards  and 
punishments.  No  child  but  can  be  made  to  ascend  from 
the  familiar  notion  of  her  father’ s  house,  well  governed  by 
firm  laws,  by  love  tempered  with  justice,  to  the  great  family 
of  nations  under  one  almighty  ruler  and  judge.  These  and 
a  thousand  other  notions  are  so  quickly  taken  in  by  the 
youngest  girl,  that  one  is  reminded  forcibly  of  the  famous 
theories  about  innate  ideas. 

It  is  impossible  in  a  really  Christian  family  that  the  head 
should  be  wrong  if  the  heart  is  right.  The  teaching  of  the 
Church  is  so  complete,  embraces  in  one  firm  grasp  our  origin 
in  the  past,  our  duties  in  the  present,  and  our  prospects  for 
all  time  and  eternity ;  our  doctrines  are  so  positive,  so  clear, 
so  satisfactory,  and  so  comprehensive  that  they  set  the 
mind  at  rest,  and  thereby  leave  the  soul  free  to  direct  and 
control  its  own  affections. 

Generally  speaking,  boys  and  girls  in  Catholic  families 
have  such  a  clear  sense  both  of  what  they  have  to  believe 
and  what  they  have  to  do,  that  when  they  are  led  astray  it 
is  by  their  affections. 

We  have  explained  in  the  preceding  chapter  how  mothers 
are  to  win  and  to  keep  the  love  of  their  boys  and  girls. 
This  is  one  necessary  step  toward  cultivating  their  hearts 
and  training  their  affections.  You  cannot  repair  or  beautify 
the  interior  of  a  house  unless  you  secure  an  entrance  and  be 
in  so  far  the  master  in  it  that  no  one  shall  disturb  you  while 
you  are  occupied  in  your  labor.  The  heart  has  been  en¬ 
dowed  by  its  Maker  with  so  mysterious  and  so  great  a 
power, — that  even  a  babe  in  arms  can  shut  its  heart  against 
its  own  parent,  and  that  a  child  of  seven  can  form,  rightly 
or  wrongly,  likings  and  dislikings  which  may  last  a  life¬ 
time. 

It  is  for  the  mother  to  study  from  the  very  beginning  the 
dispositions  of  her  precious  charge.  We  say  commonly 
that  some  natures  are  richly  endowed,  and  others  but  poorly ; 

-  that  some  persons  are  all  head  and  no  heart,  while  others 
are  all  heart  and  no  head.  That  is  to  say,  there  are  souls 
in  which  the  intellectual  powers  seem  to  predominate  and 


TEE  EFFECT  OF  A  WRONG  EDUCATION 


203 


to  absorb  into  themselves  the  affective  powers  ;  while  there 
are  others  in  whom  the  affections  seem  to  run  away  with 
the  understanding  and  the  j  udgment. 

There  is  some  truth  and  a  good  deal  of  exaggeration  in 
these  estimates  which  we  pride  ourselves  in  forming  of  the 
innate  faculties  of  children  as  well  as  of  grown-up  persons. 
Doubtless,  through  some  physical  accident  of  formation  or 
birth,  the  brain  may  be  affected  and  the  reasoning  powers 
partially  or  almost  totally  paralyzed ; — but  there  is  no  in¬ 
stance  of  this  total  paralysis  of  the  will  or  the  executive  and 
affective  j)owers  in  the  soul  where  the  mind  retains  its  full 
vigor  unimpaired.  Some  persons  are  less  sensitive,  less  af¬ 
fectionate,  less  imaginative,  less  passionate  than  others  ;  but 
in  all  persons  of  sane  mind  there  is  imagination  and  sensi¬ 
bility  and  affections  and  passions, — though  in  very  different 
degrees  of  intensity. 

Now  where  a  faculty  or  special  power  in  the  soul  is 
known  to  exist,  it  can  be  developed,  strengthened,  increased 
almost  indefinitely  by  exercise  and  proper  culture ;  just  as 
a  faculty  neglected  either  dies  out  or  lives  on  in  a  sort  of 
rudimentary  condition  for  want  of  proper  exercise.  The 
hand  and  arm  of  one  man  becomes  as  terrible  an  instrument 
of  destruction  as  the  arm  of  the  tiger,  by  long  muscular 
training.  While  another  man,  though  more  powerfully 
built  by  nature,  will  have  a  hand  as  soft  as  a  babe’ s,  and  an 
arm  as  feeble  as  a  girl’s,  from  the  absolute  lack  of  exercise. 
Women,  above  all  other  persons,  are  familiar  with  the 
success  which  so  often  attends  the  cultivation  and  develop¬ 
ment  of  the  voice,  and  how  young  persons,  seemingly  defi¬ 
cient  in  all  aptitude  for  singing,  will  exhibit,  under  careful 
culture  and  practice,  the  most  splendid  vocal  powers. 

“  HEARTLESSNESS  ”  THE  EFFECT  OF  A  WRONG  EDUCATION. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  natural  heartlessness.  Cold 
as  certain  grown-up  women,  as  well  as  men,  seem  to  be  by 
nature, — we  may  be  certain  that  neither  nature  nor  its 
Author  is  to  blame  for  this  lack  of  genial  warmth  and  affec- 


204 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


tion.  ~No  child  is  born  without  the  disposition  to  love  and 
the  power  of  loving  warmly  :  this  may  be  not  so  apparent 
at  the  surface  in  some  children  as  in  others,  or  exist  in  the 
same  degree  of  energy  ;  or,  again,  this  coldness  in  some 
may  be  only  such  as  contrasted  with  the  passionate  and  im¬ 
pulsive  fervor  of  others.  But  let  mothers  rest  assured  that 
the  heart  is  there,  with  its  natural  and  essential  powers  of 
returning  love  for  love,  and  of  practicing,  not  only  the  virtue 
of  supernatural  charity  so  indispensable  to  the  sanctity  and 
salvation  of  the  adult  Christian,  but  all  the  other  charities 
of  private  and  public  life,  with  the  many  virtues  which 
never  fail  to  adorn  the  soul  in  which  true  charity  reigns. 
Indeed  were  it  possible  (which  is  not  so)  that  any  human 
being  could  be  born  without  natural  affection,  the  Creator 
Spirit,  coming  into  the  soul  in  baptism,  would  most  surely 
repair  the  defect. 

But  comparatively  feeble  (and  we  use  this  expression  most 
reluctantly)  as  the  power  of  loving  maybe  supposed  to  be, — 
it  is  there  in  the  soul  for  the  mother’ s  tender  hand  and  fos¬ 
tering  charity  to  nurse  into  fullness  of  life,  into  perfect 
bloom  and  fruitful  maturity.  And  God’s  abundant  and 
unfailing  help  is  secured  to  the  mother  in  this  training  of 
her  child’ s  heart. 

But  the  real  heartlessness  which  shows  itself  so  offen¬ 
sively  in  the  girl  and  in  the  woman  is,  you  may  be  sure  of  it, 
the  result  of  neglect  in  the  parent,  or  of  a  training  in  every 
way  vicious. 

For  this  heartlessness  is  but  undisguised  selfishness  ob¬ 
truding  itself  upon  us  in  all  its  own  repulsive  deformity. 
The  mother’s  eye  had  failed  to  detect  this  weed  in  her 
child’s  soul,  or  allowed  it  to  grow  up  during  infancy  and 
girlhood,  under  the  delusive  hope  that  the  good  qualities 
in  her  girl’ s  nature  would  choke  out  the  bad  when  she  grew 
up  to  womanhood.  But  it  is  the  contrary  which  happens, 
unless  God  should  interfere  and  perform  a  miracle  in  favor 
of  the  neglected  or  petted  child.  Selfishness  is  pretty  sure, 
when  continually  ministered  to  and  nursed  by  all  around  it, 
to  absorb  and  draw  to  itself  all  the  vital  energies  of  the  soul. 


EXAMPLES  OF  HEARTLESSNESS, 


205 


In  the  tropical  forests, — in  the  West  Indies  particularly, 
there  is  a  formidable  species  of  parasite  creeper  whose 
power  becomes  fatal  to  the  mightiest  trees  in  the  forest.  It 
first  shows  itself  like  a  little  green  plant  on  a  sturdy  branch 
of  the  forest  tree,  or  a  hole  in  the  trunk,  whence  it  sends 
down  thread-like  feelers  to  the  ground.  There  they  take 
root  and  reascend  along  the  trunk,  increasing  in  number 
and  size,  till  not  one  feature  of  the  parent-tree  is  visible.  The 
whole  is  now  inclosed  in  a  network  of  serpentine  forms  so 
firm,  so  robust,  and  so  vigorous,  that  the  tiny  plant  has  be¬ 
come  a  giant,  strangling  in  its  embrace  the  generous  trunk 
which  fed  and  supported  it,  and  hanging  high  in  mid-air, 
above  the  topmost  branches  of  its  dead  benefactor,  its  bril¬ 
liant  clusters  of  flowers.  Thus  does  selfishness  prosper  and 
flourish  ! 

EXAMPLES  OF  HEARTLESSXESS. 

In  a  family  noted  for  high  culture,  refinement,  and  deep 
religious  faith,  the  death  of  a  father  brought  to  his  home  a 
near  relative,  a  venerable  lady  of  most  exemplary  life  and 
unselfish  devotion  to  the  good  of  others.  Indeed  this  noble 
generosity  of  soul  had  prevented  her  from  accepting  when 
young,  beautiful,  and  accomplished,  the  many  offers  of 
marriage  made  to  her,  prompting  her  to  give  her  whole  ex¬ 
istence  to  the  comfort  and  happiness  of  her  nephews  and 
nieces. 

She  had  been  looked  up  to  by  the  dead  man  with  that 
union  of  respect  and  love  which  we  call  veneration,  and  his 
wife  shared  these  sentiments.  Their  respected  relative  had 
come  to  the  widow  in  her  bereavement,  to  offer  consolation 
which  no  other  could,  and  to  spend,  as  was  the  religious 
custom  of  her  country,  the  night  before  the  burial  in  pray¬ 
ing  beside  the  dead.  Her  arrival  was  greeted  with  heartfelt 
gratitude  by  all  the  mourners,  save  one,  a  girl  of  thirteen 
or  fourteen,  who  was  busy,  when  the  visitor  arrived,  in 
dressing  a  doll  for  some  little  girl  of  the  neighborhood. 
The  presence  of  death  in  the  house,  the  grief  which  over¬ 
whelmed  her  mother  and  sisters,  found  this  girl  perfectly 


206 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


callous  ;  the  outburst  of  emotion  with  which  their  cherished 
relative  was  received  did  not  move  her  in  the  least,  or  only 
caused  her  to  look  up  with  an  air  of  annoyance  from  her 
self-imposed  task  of  sewing.  Presently  her  mother  begged 
her  to  go  and  help  prepare  a  room  for  their  aunt.  But  at 
this  interruption  she  flew  into  a  rage,  and  in  the  hearing  of 
the  aged  and  sensitive  lady  herself,  the  selfish  vixen  burst 
forth  :  “  What  on  earth  brings  this  old  woman  here  \  I  am 
sure  she  is  not  wanted  ”...  and  other  such  amenities. 
The  wound  which  these  cruel  words  caused  was  a  deep  one, 
and  was  never  healed  in  that  most  generous  heart.  They 
filled  it  with  forebodings  which  she  hardly  ventured  to 
breathe  into  the  ear  of  any  member  of  the  family. 

They  were,  however,  not  to  remain  unfulfilled.  She  was 
the  youngest  child,  petted,  indulged,  spoiled.  Her  natural 
selfishness  blighted  and  overtopped  every  other  quality  in 
her  character.  When  its  fearful  manifestations  alarmed 
both  parents,  the  weak  mother  attempted  in  vain  to  check 
what  was  now  utterly  beyond  her  control.  The  heartless 
girl  became  the  more  heartless  woman,  without  affection  for 
husband  or  children,  without  a  particle  of  love  for  her 
mother  or  her  sisters.  She  has  divided,  darkened,  and 
ruined  the  home  which  her  too  fond  father  had  labored  so 
hard  to  render  happy  and  bright  for  all  his  dear  ones. 

Were  the  bitter  fruits  of  heartlessness  to  be  tasted  only 
by  the  parents  through  whose  criminal  neglect  and  indul- 
gence  grew  up  the  evil  plant  which  bore  them, — it  would  be 
a  most  just  retribution.  But  the  heartless  woman  proves  a 
bane  and  a  destroyer  to  others  as  well  as  a  heart-sore  to  her 
parents  and  nearest  relatives. 

Where  with  this  most  odious  form  of  selfishness  in  a  wo¬ 
man  she  also  possesses  the  terrible  gift  of  beauty,  she  becomes 
a  curse  to  every  man  who  falls  under  the  fatal  spell  of  her 
fair  face.  Love  she  cannot,  for,  love  being  the  gift  of  self, 
is  impossible  to  the  heartless  and  selfish.  The  vanity  be¬ 
gotten  of  the  selfishness  which  is  conscious  of  the  charm  of 
beauty,  only  yearns  for  admiration,  and  gloats  on  every  fresh 
addition  to  the  number  of  admirers.  The  pains  endured  by 


A  HEARTLESS  WIFE  AND  HUSBAND. 


207 


the  thrice-foolish  men  who  allow  themselves  to  believe  in 
the  warmth  of  a  heartless  woman’s  smiles,  or  to  trust  to  her 
promises,  are  of  no  account  to  her.  We  remember  once  to 
have  seen  a  gigantic  ivy  all  in  bloom  on  a  part  of  the  ruined 
walls  of  Laon.  The  odor  of  its  flowers  is  so  sweet  and  the 
nectar  which  they  distill  so  intoxicating,  that  the  flowering 
mass  was  covered  with  a  cloud  of  various  insects  which 
struggled  and  fought  for  a  taste  of  the  delicious  food,  while 
the  earth  beneath  was  covered  with  the  carcasses  of  count¬ 
less  victims. 

THE  PUNISHMENT  OF  HEAKTLESSNESS. 

The  selfish  and  heartless  make  no  friends, — for  they  can¬ 
not  inspire  any  one  who  knows  them  with  that  enlightened 
esteem  and  solid  respect  which  are  the  first  requisites  for 
true  love  in  any  being.  Christian  theology,  when  well  ana¬ 
lyzed,  shows  that  the  greatest  torment  of  the  damned  is  not 
only  the  loss  of  God  and  of  the  blissful  society  of  heaven, 
but  the  being  placed  eternally  face  to  face  with  one’ s  self, 
with  that  self  which  is  the  creation  of  one’s  own  will,  the 
work  of  one’s  own  hands.  And,  while  yet  on  earth,  the 
most  terrible  torture  of  the  utterly  selfish  woman  (say  the 
same  of  man),  is,  when  admiration  and  enjoyment  have 
passed  away,  to  find  herself  in  presence  of  herself  , — of  her 
own  false  and  hollow  heart.  This  is  the  hell  of  the  heart¬ 
less,  even  in  this  life. 

But  one  or  two  other  examples  of  this  monstrous  perver¬ 
sity  in  the  moral  formation  of  certain  persons  may  contain 
an  instructive  lesson  for  more  classes  than  one. 

A  HEARTLESS  WIFE  AND  A  MORE  HEARTLESS  HUSBAND. 

Two  young  people  had  married  early  in  their  native  coun¬ 
try,  with  the  understanding  that  the  husband  would  go 
forthwith  to  America  and  there  provide  for  his  young  wife 
the  home  which  the  misfortune  of  the  times  and  the  cir¬ 
cumstances  of  the  country  made  it  impossible  to  obtain  at 
home. 


208 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


A  few  months  after  his  departure,  however,  his  wife  was 
induced  by  a  neighboring  family,  who  were  going  to  New 
York,  to  take  passage  with  them, — thinking  in  her  simple 
heart  that,  once  in  the  great  city,  she  could  find  her  hus¬ 
band  as  easily  as  in  her  native  village. 

The  poor  little  woman’s  disappointment  and  dismay  on 
her  arrival  here  can  be  easily  conceived.  She  was  penniless, 
and  no  inquiries  she  could  make  availed  to  obtain  tidings  of 
her  husband.  After  knocking  at  many  doors  she  was  di¬ 
rected  by  the  clergy  of  the  Nativity,  in  Second  Avenue,  to  a 
family  up  town  ever  ready  to  interest  themselves  in  cases  of 
distress.  So  one  morning  the  mistress  of  the  house  found 
in  her  waiting-room  a  plainly  but  neatly  dressed  young  per¬ 
son  of  striking  beauty  of  countenance,  “like  one  of  these, 
lovely  Irish  girls  whom  a  painter  would  select  for  a  Ma¬ 
donna.”  Her  story  was  soon  told.  “Her  husband  had 
promised  to  send  for  her  when  he  had  got  a  little  place  for 
both,  and  she  was  to  wait  at  home  for  his  leiter.  But,” 

.  .  .  And  here  the  young  creature  broke  down.  She 

told  the  kind  motherly  lady  who  questioned  her  most  affec¬ 
tionately,  that  she  was  soon  to  become  herself  a  mother,  and 
her  impatience  to  join  her  husband  was  very  intelligible. 
She  had  found  a  protectress,  however:  a  safe  temporary 
home  was  provided  for  her,,  she  was  given  sewing  and  other 
such  work  to  do,  and  every  care  was  taken  of  her  welfare 
till  her  babe  was  born.  “It  was  a  most  beautiful  child,” 
said  our  informant,  “and  the  happiness  of  its  young  mo¬ 
ther  would  have  been  complete  had  the  efforts  made  to  dis¬ 
cover  her  husband  been  successful.” 

A  few  weeks  after  the  birth  of  her  child,  she  called  on 
her  kind  benefactress  and  told  her  that  she  had  been  ad¬ 
vised  to  go  into  some  good  family  as  a  wet  nurse,  and  had 
put  for  that  purpose  an  advertisement  in  the  daily  papers. 
“  I  am  sorry  you  did  so  without  consulting  me,  Mary,”  said 
her  kind  friend.  “It  is  a  thing  I  would  never  advise  any 
mother  to  do.  And,  besides,  we  could  have  found  you 
plenty  of  good  work  to  do,  while  attending  to  your  babe.” 

It  was  too  late  ;  the  persons  with  whom  Mary  was  stay- 


A  HEARTLESS  WIFE  AND  HUSBAND. 


209 


ing  had  persuaded  her  to  this  course,  and  the  poor  inexpe¬ 
rienced  young  thing  hoped  to  gain  money  to  help  her  strug¬ 
gling  husband  in  his  efforts  to  secure  a  home  of  their  own. 
And  then  again,  she  was  assured  that  her  babe  would  be 
well  cared  for  in  a  family  a  little  out  of  town,  which  they 
designated.  And  so  the  fatal  step  was  taken. 

Mary  was  accepted  as  nurse  in  the  family  of  a  minister  in 
Brooklyn,  whose  name,  as  well  as  the  denomination  to  which 
he  belonged,  it  is  needless  to  mention.  After  some  three 
weeks  had  elapsed,  this  gentleman  called  one  day  on 
Mary’s  New  York  benefactress,  to  inform  her  that  he  should 
have  to  part  with  the  nurse. 

“Part  with  her?”  replied  the  other;  “why  so?  are 
you  not  satisfied  with  her?”  “Oh,  she  is  a  very  good 
woman — neat,  quiet,  respectful,  very  careful  of  our  child — 
and  our  family  physician,  after  examining  her,  pronounces 
her  a  remarkably  healthy  person.  But  there  are  certain 
things  about  her  we  do  not  like.”  “  When  did  you  make 
up  your  mind  to  part  with  her  ?  ”  “  The  first  week  she 

came  to  us.”  “And  you  did  not  tell  her  of  it  then?” 
“No,  because  we  have  not  been  able  to  get  a  suitable 
person  to  take  her  place.”  “That  seems  unkind  to  her. 
She  could  have  then  returned  to  her  own  child  in  good  time. 
But  now  she  wall  find  that  it  has  been  weaned.  .  .  .  But, 
pray,  wdiat  fault  in  her  could  have  justified  a  delay  which, 
to  say  the  least,  is  cruel  ?  ”  “  Oh  !  she  moans  in  her  sleep, 

and  seems  unhappy  away  from  her  child,  and  we  do  not 
want  to  have  our  babe  nursed  by  any  one  who  seems  un¬ 
happy.”  The  lady  gazed  at  him  in  utter  astonishment, 
mixed  with  no  little  contempt  for  the  heartlessness  of  both 
himself  and  his  wife.  At  length  she  said  indignantly  :  “Is 
it  possible,  sir,  that  you  could  expect  any  woman  with  a  true 
mother’s  nature  to  be  able  to  give  up  her  own  child,  and 
give  the  nourishment  she  owed  it  to  that  of  another  mother, 
without  feeling  her  heart  breaking,  or  without  moaning  in 
her  sleep  ?  ’  ’  He  persisted  in  saying  that  he  saw  nothing  to 
blame  in  his  wife’s  or  his  own  conduct.  The  feelings  of 
poor  Mary  or  the  fate  of  her  babe  never  cost  either  of  them 
14 


210 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


a  thought.  “  At  least,”  said  the  lady,  as  he  rose  to  take 
his  leave,  “  you  must  promise  me  to  send  Mary  back  to 
her  babe  at  once.  For  to  keep  her  longer  in  your  house,  or 
in  ignorance  of  your  intention,  would  be  wrong  and  crim¬ 
inal.”  A  promise  was  made,  but  was  not  kept.  Mary 
was  detained  a  week  or  ten  days  longer,  and  then  dis¬ 
missed  with  the  heartless  indifference  which  characterized 
the  minister  and  his  spouse.  At  least  a  full  month  had  then 
elapsed  since  Mary  had  intrusted  her  beautiful  babe  to  the 
out-of-town  nurse,  giving  two-thirds  of  her  wages  to  secure 
it  every  possible  care  and  comfort.  All  this  time  she  had 
not  been  permitted  to  visit  it. 

Her  feeling  of  joy  at  the  prospect  of  seeing  it  overcame 
every  other  sentiment  in  her  heart,  and  without  a  moment’s 
delay  she  flew  to  its  side.  It  was  summer-time  ;  she  found  the 
woman  with  whom  she  had  left  her  treasure  dressed  in  the 
most  slatternly  fashion,  and  a  baby,  fat  and  rosy'  fast  asleep 
in  a  cradle.  Poor  Mary’s  heart  sank  within  her,  and  a 
great  faintness  came  over  her  as  she  looked  about  for  her 
own.  She  dared  not,  indeed  she  could  not,  inquire.  .  .  . 

On  a  wooden  washboard  she  saw  a  dirty  shawl  in  a  bundle, 
and  covered  with  flies,  from  which  a  feeble  moan  proceeded. 
And  going  over  she  found  her  babe  lying  neglected  there, 
so  emaciated  and  so  feeble  that  it  had  not  strength  enough 
to  cry  for  the  food  it  needed. 

Of  course  the  unnatural  monster  with  whom  she  had  left 
it  was  confounded  at  the  sudden  apparition  of  the  young 
mother.  Had  she  waited  a  day  or  two  longer  it  would 
have  been  out  of  pain  and  soon  buried  away  out  of  sight, 
and  a  story  found  to  cover  its  slow  murder.  But  poor  Mary 
had  no  time  to  waste  in  explanation  or  accusations.  She 
must  save  her  child. 

Away  she  flew  to  her  benefactress.  She  was  at  first  una¬ 
ble  to  utter  a  single  word,  and  the  former  thought  the  child 
was  dead.  But  when  she  heard  how  the  case  was,  “  Go 
back  instantly,”  she  said,  “  and  bring  your  baby  here.” 
While  Mary  had  been  in  the  service  of  the  heartless  minis¬ 
ter  and  his  unwomanly  wife,  the  home  to  which  Mary  was 


A  HEARTLESS  WIFE  AND  HUSBAND. 


211 


hastening  to  bring  her  dying  child  had  been  visited  by 
death,  and  in  the  gentle  mistress’  s  own  bedroom  a  cradle 
was  empty,  which  she  knelt  by  more  than  once  each  day  to 
ask  for  strength  from  on  high,  and  to  beseech  her  little 
angel  boy  among  the  choirs  above  to  protect  his  mother’s 
home. 

That  cradle  was  now  prepared  and  decked  for  the  stran¬ 
ger  child.  So  when  it  arrived  the  entire  household  was  in¬ 
terested  in  helping  the  mistress  to  save  the  little  starveling. 
A  bath  of  spirits  and  water  was  ready,  and  when,  with  in¬ 
finite  tenderness,  the  noble-hearted  lady  had  bathed  it,  she 
arrayed  the  little  sufferer  in  her  dead  boy’ s  most  beautiful 
dress,  and  laid  it  in  his  cradle,  while  her  daughters  knelt 
around  to  look  upon  the  tiny  feeble  thing,  and  to  pray  that 
it  might  live.  Who  can  paint  the  ecstasy  of  poor  Mary  as 
she  too  knelt  by  its  side,  and  believed  that  in  the  heavenly 
atmosphere  of  that  room  her  babe  must  soon  recover. 

Presently  the  great-hearted  husband  of  her  benefactress 
returned  from  the  courts,  and  on  entering  his  wife’s  room 
was  greeted  with  the  words  :  “  Oh,  do  come  and  see  what  I 
have  got  for  you.”  The  other  approached  the  cradle  around 
which  he  saw  his  bright-faced  children  gazing  delightedly, 
and  the  strange  young  woman  absorbed  in  watching  her 
sick  infant.  The  tears  filled  the  eyes  of  the  Christian  gen¬ 
tleman  as  he  took  in  the  full  meaning  of  what  he  saw,  and 
kneeling  down  reverently  by  the  side  of  the  cradle  he  kissed 
the  sufferer  there  as  he  would  the  feet  of  the  Divine  Babe  of 
Bethlehem.  “  Darling,”  he  said  to  his  wife,  as  he  rose  from 
his  knees,  “  God  will  bless  you  for  this  !  ” 

Meanwhile  no  time  was  lost  in  seeking  a  new  position  for 
Mary  as  nurse  in  a  good  family.  Her  infant  could  take  no 
nourishment  from  her,  and  she  was  assured  that  where  it 
was  every  care  would  be  lavished  on  it.  Indeed,  it  was 
thenceforth  looked  upon  as  the  child  of  the  house.  With¬ 
in  a  few  days  a  gentleman  called,  in  answer  to  the  adver¬ 
tisement  in  the  papers, — a  Mr.  Robinson, — who  felt  both 
touched  and  deeply  interested  by  what  he  heard  of  Mary, 
and  by  the  genuine  charity  exercised  toward  her  by  her 


212 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


benefactress.  But  lie  would  have  Mary  not  separated  from 
lier  own  infant,  and  took  it  in  the  carriage  with  her  to 
his  home,  where  the  little  flame  of  life,  which  had  flashed  up 
iltfully  under  the  loving  care  of  a  true  mother,  soon  went 
out  forever. 

Will  the  reader  ask,  if  from  the  home  where  that  dying 
child  was  taken  in  and  nursed  as  tenderly  and  reverently 
as  if  it  had  been  the  Babe  cast  out  on  the  roadside  at  Beth¬ 
lehem, — true  women  and  true  men  went  forth  in  good  season 
to  gladden  the  souls  of  the  generous  mother,  and  the  no  less 
generous  father,  of  whom  we  have  had  a  glimpse  ?  We  can 
answer :  Ay — true  men  and  true  women  every  one  of  them 
— because  their  hearts  had  been  trained  from  childhood  to 
the  pursuit  of  every  thing  that  was  unselfish,  and  devoted 
to  the  divine  honor  and  the  good  of  others. 

* 

A  HEARTLESS  MISTRESS’S  TERRIBLE  FATE. 

This  heartlessness  is  all  the  more  criminal  that  it  is  found 
in  persons  making  a  special  profession  of  piety  ;  and  it  is 
simply  monstrous  in  all  who  have  taken  on  themselves  to 
be  the  religious  guides  of  others. 

Some  quarter  of  a  century  ago  two  excellent  girls  living 
out  at  service  in  good  families  supported  their  aged  mother, 
— one  of  these  ideal  women  so  frequent  in  the  dear  old  Irish 
homes  described  elsewhere.  When  the  last  illness  visited 
their  parent,  the  eldest  girl,  Catherine,  was  living  in  a  family 
noted  for  the  active  benevolence  of  its  young  mistress,  while 
the  younger,  Mary,  resided  with  a  near  relative  and  friend 
of  the  former.  Catherine  had  no  difficulty  in  persuading 
her  worshiped  lady  to  accompany  her  to  her  parent’s  sick 
bed ;  in  truth,  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  prevent 
these  visits.  For,  one  powerful  means  employed  by  divine 
grace,  in  bringing  this  young  wife  and  mother  into  the 
Catholic  Church,  was  the  supernatural  beauty  she  had  re¬ 
marked  on  the  features  and  in  the  bearing  of  so  many  poor 
women  of  the  sufferer’s  class.  She  described  her  as  not 
naturally  handsome  in  countenance,  but  her  snow-white 


A  HEARTLESS  MISTRESS’S  TERRIBLE  FATE. 


213 


hair  inclosed  a  face  stamped  with  such  heavenly  sweetness 
and  resignation,  and  through  her  meek  and  modest  eyes 
shone  a  light  so  marvelous  that  it  seemed  to  come  from  a 
something  divine,  and  to  till  the  soul  of  the  beholder  with 
thoughts  of  God  and  promptings  to  godlike  deeds.  Of 
course  Catherine  remained  by  the  side  of  her  sick  mother, 
and  every  thing  which  her  mistress  could  do  to  show  her 
respect  for  the  dying  woman  or  to  alleviate  her  pain,  was 
done  without  stint  or  cessation. 

Mary  had  some  difficulty  in  obtaining  permission  to -re¬ 
main  a  single  night  with  her  dear  parent,  who,  thanks  to 
the  generous  and  intelligent  nursing  already  secured  to  her, 
soon  rallied  so  far  that  both  daughters  returned  to  their  sit¬ 
uations.  Catherine,  however,  was  sent  back  with  peremp¬ 
tory  orders  to  remain  until  the  doctor  had  declared  there  was 
no  further  need  of  her  presence.  A  second  attack,  more 
alarming  than  the  first,  soon  afterward  summoned  both  girls 
away,  Mary  being  explicitly  told  that  she  could  not  stay 
away  a  single  night  unless  she  wished  to  give  up  her  place. 
The  lady  who  showed  this  disregard  of  the  feelings  of  a 
daughter  and  the  sacred  claims  of  filial  duty,  was  not  con¬ 
sidered  a  bad  woman,  nor  an  uncharitable  woman.  She 
was  pious  in  her  own  way,  and  gave  liberally  toward  works 
of  beneficence.  But  she  had  been  reared  to  look  upon  the 
poor,  even  upon  her  servants,  as  upon  a  caste  who  had  no 
right  to  have  deep  affections  or  refined  feelings. 

The  sick  mother  rallied  a  second  time,  only  to  be  seized 
with  the  symptoms  of  a  near  dissolution  ;  and  as  poor  Mary 
presented  herself  to  obtain  permission  for  a  third  visit,  her 
mistress  could  not  restrain  her  ill  temper.  “Well,  I  de¬ 
clare” — were  the  cruel  words  which  fell  from  the  proud 
rich  woman’s  lips  on  the  heart  of  the  poor  and  lowly  de¬ 
pendent — “well,  I  declare  your  old  mother  takes  a  long 
time  to  die  !  ” 

The  poor  weeping  girl  only  reached  her  mother’ s  home  to 
find  that  the  pure  spirit  had  gone  to  its  eternal  rest ;  and 
when  the  funeral  was  over  she  accompanied  Catherine  to 
their  common  benefactress, — and  declared  amid  tears  and 


214 


THE  MIlUtOR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


sobs,  that  she  dared  not,  could  not  return  to  her  mistress. 
Then  she  reluctantly  told  of  the  cruel  words  uttered  by  the 
latter.  The  lady,  shocked  to  hear  such  a  tale  told  of  one  of 
her  own  kinswomen  and  oldest  friends,  tried  to  console 
the  weeping  girl,  and  prophesied  in  her  just  indignation. 

“  Mary,”  she  said,  “  go  back  and  stay  with  your  mistress, 
and  pray  much  for  her  ;  for,  something  tells  me,  that  before 
a  single  year  is  over  God  will  punish  her  in  some  dreadful 
way,  and  that  when  she  dies  not  one  of  her  children  shall 
be  at  hand  to  comfort  her.” 

A  few  months  after  this  incident  the  heartless  woman, 
with  her  youngest  daughter,  went  to  Europe  on  a  pleasure 
trip  ;  the  vessel  which  bore  them  perished, — and  was  sup¬ 
posed  to  have  been  wrecked  amid  the  icebergs  olf  the  coast 
of  Newfoundland.  No  tidings  or  details  of  the  catastrophe 
ever  reached  the  public.  Ah  !  what  would  not  that  mother 
in  her  supreme  agony  have  given  for  the  comforting  pres¬ 
ence  of  the  dear  ones  at  home,  or  for  one  short  hour  of  res¬ 
pite  from  the  pitiless  jaws  of  the  deep  ! 

UNSELFISHNESS  THE  TREASURE  OF  THE  LABORING  POOR. 

The  directions  here  given  will  serve  to  warn  mothers  in 
the  home  of  the  laboring  man,  as  well  as  in  that  of  the  most 
wealthy  or  well-born,  against  the  fatal  fruits  of  their  own 
neglect  in  cultivating  the  hearts  of  their  children.  Oh  !  let 
mothers  begin  early  to  destroy  in  the  souls  of  their  dear 
ones  every  root  and  fiber  of  this  dreadful  bane  of  self¬ 
ishness  !  We  have  watched  with  admiration  one  mother, 
blessed  in  this  respect  with  uncommon  skill,  accustom  an 
infant  to  give  back  to  her  the  toys  which  it  fancied  most. 
It  was  only  the  beginning  of  the  golden  habit  of  generosity, 
ever  ready  to  take  from  self  and  give  to  others.  Later  the 
child  was  taught  never  to  enjoy  alone  any  thing  given  to  it 
as  a  plaything  or  a  dessert.  Then,  out  of  the  first  pennies 
received  for  pocket-money,  it  was  made  to  give  at  least 
the  greatest  portion  to  the  poor ;  while  the  most  touching 
stories  of  other  children’s  distress  and  suffering  were  told 


THE  TREASURE  OF  THE  LABORING  POOR. 


215  . 


by  the  parent  to  awaken  within  the  tender  soul  of  infancy 
the  sense  of  pity  and  the  virtue  of  mercy  by  these  pictures 
of  woe  often  near  at  hand.  And  will  not  God  aid  and  bless 
these  industries  of  motherly  love  % 

Let  us  sav  it  at  once  :  the  soil  of  the  laborer’s  heart  is 
one  especially  rich  in  the  growth  of  all  the  divine  virtues 
that  claim  kinship  with  generosity.  No  one  knows  it  bet¬ 
ter  than  he  whose  hand  writes  these  lines,  and  to  whose 
memory  so  long  and  rich  a  record  of  the  generous  and 
heroic  charity  of  the  poor  and  the  laboring  classes  is  now 
vividly  present. 

Whence  has  come  the  rich  and  seemingly  exhaustless 
fund  out  of  which  have  arisen  the  Catholic  churches,  col¬ 
leges,  academies,  convents,  orphan-asylums,  hospitals,  and 
homes  for  the  aged  and  infirm  which  have  sprung  up  in 
the  English-speaking  world  within  the  last  half-century  ? 
Mainly  from  the  scanty  purse  of  the  laboring  man,  from 
the  very  need  of  the  poor  man,  and  from  the  incredible 
generosity  of  servant  girls !  Within  this  great  city  of  New 
York  how  many  thrilling  anecdotes  could  be  told  by  every 
priest  who  has  had  to  build  a  church,  to  found  a  school,  or 
some  institution  of  beneficence  ! 

Let  mothers  see  to  it  that  this  rich  inheritance  of  gener¬ 
osity  be  transmitted  to  their  children,  to  their  daughters 
particularly,  so  that  the  coming  generation  be  as  royal- 
hearted  as  that  which  went  before  it. 

The  blessed  root  of  this  undying  generosity  must  be  laid 
in  the  early  love  of  Him  who  “also  hath  loved  us,  and  hath 
delivered  himself  for  us,  an  oblation  and  a  sacrifice  to  God.” 
This  has  been  already  insisted  on  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
and  it  only  remains  that  we  should  once  more  urge  upon 
the  attention  of  mothers  the  necessity  of  making  their  chil¬ 
dren  do  generously  whatever  they  do  for  God,  for  their 
parents,  their  brothers  and  sisters,  for  the  poor,  the  widow » 
and  the  orphan. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


THE  MOTHER’S  OFFICE  TOWARD  BOYHOOD  AHD  GIRLHOOD. 

CULTURE  OF  THE  HEART — (COHTIHUED.) 

Magnum  donum  Dei,  donum  cordis! 

A  great  gift  of  God  is  the  gift  of  heart. 

St.  Thomas  Villanova. 

We  have  been  like  travelers  on  their  way  to  the  Pacific 
coast,  borne  swiftly  along  tracts  most  rich  in  treasures  be¬ 
yond  all  price,  at  which  they  could  only  glance  through 
the  narrow  windows  of  their  temporary  prison,  as  steam 
hurried  them  onward  to  their  goal.  Even  though  we  should 
devote  this  entire  volume  to  this  beautiful  and  vast  theme 
of  the  culture  of  the  heart  in  childhood  and  youth, — we 
should  be  far  from  exhausting  it ;  and  after  traveling  never 
so  leisurely  over  the  road,  we  should  leave  many  rich  un¬ 
derlying  veins  of  thought  and  consideration  untouched 
and  undiscovered.  At  least  must  we  direct  the  attention  of 
every  mother  who  will  follow  our  guidance  to  a  few  addi¬ 
tional  points. 

The  heart  of  youth  can  be  most  truly  likened  to  these 
rich  deposits  of  mineral  wealth  which  the  hand  of  the  Crea¬ 
tor  has  accumulated  for  our  use  beneath  the  surface  of  this 
globe,  or  to  the  mighty  elements  of  fire  and  water  out  of 
which  the  science  of  man  is  developing  daily  such  benefi¬ 
cent  or  destructive  forces.  There  is  no  limit  to  the  wealth 
of  goodness  and  generosity  which  lies  hidden  within  the 
heart  of  any  one  of  your  boys  or  girls  ;  and  this  fund  every 
mother  lias  to  study  and  bring  to  light,  enriching  therewith 

216 


CULTURE  OF  TEE  HEART. 


217 


first  of  all  tlie  soul  of  her  child,  and  then  teaching  it  to 

bestow  its  treasures  of  goodness  and  generosity  on  others, — 

on  the  members  of  the  family  circle  first,  and  then  on  all 

who  stand  in  need  of  generous  words  and  deeds.  There  is 

more  power  for  good  stored  up  in  the  heart  of  a  babe, — 

power  to  lift  itself  upward  to  God  by  heroic  goodness  and 

godlike  works,  and  to  lift  others  with  it  to  God’s  level, — 

than  there  is  of  electric  force  in  the  ocean.  And  vet  science 

«/ 

tells  us  that  a  tiny  cup  full  of  water  contains  undeveloped 
electricity  enough  to  blow  up  a  fortress. 

The  forces  which  education — the  true  education  given  by 
a  Christian  mother — calls  forth  in  the  soul  of  her  child  may 
be  destined,  in  the  designs  and  with  the  aid  of  God’s  al¬ 
mighty  grace,  to  save  and  sanctify  as  many  souls  as  St. 
Ignatius  Loyola,  St.  Francis  Xavier,  St.  Vincent  de  Paul, 
or  St.  Teresa.  These  same  forces  neglected  or  perverted  by 
a  wrong  heart-culture,  may  destroy  as  many  souls  as  a 
Lucifer  or  a  Mazzini. 

Let  not  mothers  who  read  this, — no  matter  how  poor  or 
overburdened  with  care, — say :  My  child  is  born  in  obscu¬ 
rity,  and  cannot  be  designed  by  Providence  for  such  a  great 
work  and  such  mighty  results  as  are  pointed  out  here. 
Shall  we  look  at  one  or  two  examples  near  our  own  times, 
of  men  and  women  who  have  lived  in  our  generation  ? 

Here  is  a  poor  cooper’s  family  in  a  little  town  in  the 
midst  of  a  vine-growing  country.  There  are  two  children  : 
a  boy  who  is  working  hard  to  gain  promotion  in  the  parish 
school,  with  the  hope  of  being  then  sent  to  college  and  be¬ 
coming  in  good  time  a  priest, — and  a  timid,  sickly  little 
girl,  whom  it  requires  perpetual  nursing  and  all  the  indus¬ 
try  of  a  mother’s  love  to  save  from  the  hand  of  death.  The 
mother  is  a  God-fearing  woman,  who  makes  of  the  practice 
of  solid  piety  the  first  care  and  pleasure  of  both  her  chil¬ 
dren  ;  and  the  father — in  the  midst  of  the  deluge  of  irre¬ 
ligious  doctrines  and  revolutionary  tendencies  which  have 
crazed  the  laboring  classes  in  town  and  country — holds  firm¬ 
ly  to  the  faith  of  his  fathers.  From  the  dawn  till  late 
into  the  night  the  townsfolk  see  him  toiling  away  at  his 


218 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


trade,  varying  his  occupation  with  the  culture  of  a  small 
X3atch  of  vineyard  at  some  distance  in  the  country.  In  the 
terrible  times  during  which  their  boy  has  grown  to  man¬ 
hood  and  is  approaching  the  epoch  of  his  ordination,  and 
while  their  sickly  girl  is  budding  into  womanhood,  both 
parents  have  had  to  fight  a  hard  battle  with  the  dire  dis¬ 
tress  and  famine  which  sweeps  over  their  country  like  the 
breath  of  the  Divine  wrath,  and  with  the  tempest  of  impie¬ 
ty,  blood,  and  fire  which  sweeps  before  it  throne  and  altar, 
king,  queen,  nobles,  bishops,  priests,  and  every  man  and 
woman  on  whom  suspicion  of  loyalty  or  religiousness  can 
light. 

The  brother,  concealed  in  his  lowly  paternal  home,  has 
undertaken  to  cultivate  the  mind  and  heart  of  his  sister, 
and  he  teaches  her  all  he  knows,  the  languages  of  Greece 
and  Dome,  together  with  those  of  modern  Europe.  It 
seemed  a  folly  to  the  parents,  a  folly  to  friends  and  neigh¬ 
bors,  this  high  schooling  of  the  poor  cooper’ s  sickly,  shrink¬ 
ing  daughter  by  a  brother  whose  ambition  was  to  cultivate 
both  mind  and  heart,  in  man  and  woman,  to  the  highest 
degree, — and  for  God' s  service  !  And  so,  while  parents  at 
home  murmured,  and  outside  acquaintance  sneered,  the 
twin  souls  grew  under  the  silent  training  of  that  Spirit,  who 
only  asks  of  man  to  turn  to  good  purpose  “the  late  and 
early  rain  ’  ’  of  the  present  day,  and  will  Himself  give  the 
increase  and  the  ripe  fruit  in  due  season. 

That  brother’s  soul  was  not  of  the  temper  which  could 
permit  a  priest  to  tarry  idly  or  lie  hidden  beneath  the  shel¬ 
ter  of  his  father’s  workshop,  while  Paris  streamed  with  the 
blood  of  priests  and  bishops,  and  souls  in  hourly  peril  of 
death  sought  in  vain  the  saving  aid  a  priestly  hand  could 
alone  bestow.  But  to  Paris  he  did  not  go  alone.  The 
timid,  sickly  maiden  bore  within  her  bosom  a  heroic  soul, 
and  she  would  share  her  brother’s  dangers,  and,  so  far  as 
she  might,  his  glorious  labors. 

When  the  great  social  earthquake  was  over,  European 
society  was  like  a  city  overturned  to  its  very  foundations. 
Unbelief  and  the  most  hideous  forms  of  anti-christian  error 


CULTURE  OF  TEE  HEART. 


219 


had  invaded  hearts  and  honseholds  among  every  class,  and 
the  work  of  conversion  had  to  be  begun  over  again  by  the 
patient  apostleship  of  education, — more  laborious  a  hun¬ 
dredfold  and  more  difficult  than  the  first  great  mission  of 
the  Twelve,  when  they  went  forth  from  the  Upper  Chamber 
to  overthrow  Roman  and  Grecian  idolatry,  with  all  the  bar¬ 
barous  paganism  of  the  tribes  lying  outside  the  empire  of 
the  Caesars.  And  new  worlds  were  also  opening  beyond  the 
seas,  where  woman’s  devotion  and  heroism  were  called  to 
vie  with  the  most  fervent  zeal  of  priestly  workmen. 

The  brother  had  been  but  the  instrument  in  God’s  hand 
training  and  preparing  that  little  sister,  till  the  memorable 
day,  November  the  21st,  1800,  when  Providence  made  her 
the  corner-stone  of  a  society  of  apostolic  women  whose 
ranks  now  extend  from  Paris  to  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

She  was  in  the  very  springtide  of  her  maidenhood,  when 
he  who  is  now  seated  on  the  chair  of  St.  Peter  was  first  laid 
a  babe  on  the  knees  of  Countess  Caterina  Mastai ;  and  on 
May  the  25th,  1865,  when  that  nobly-born  child,  after  pass¬ 
ing  through  the  furnace,  had  borne  for  nineteen  years  the 
thorny  crown  of  the  Pontificate,  that  great-souled  woman 
passed  to  the  city  of  God  on  high,  where  thirteen  hundred 
and  sixty-eight  of  her  associates  in  the  world- wide  apostle¬ 
ship  were  waiting  for  her,  and  nearly  thrice  that  number 
were  still  on  earth  carrying  on  throughout  both  hemispheres 
the  divine  purpose  to  which  she  had  devoted  her  life. 

We  have  not  forgotten  that  bent  and  venerable  form  as 
we  were  privileged  to  behold  it  just  before  the  Angel  of 
Death  had  given  the  first  warning  of  his  approach  :  the  face 
which  seemed  to  shine  with  the  radiance  of  the  blessed, 
the  words  so  full  of  the  Spirit  of  God  and  which  burned 
into  the  listener’s  soul,  the  atmosphere  of  holiness  which 
surrounded  her,  making  one  feel  as  if  “a  virtue  went 
forth”  from  the  very  hem  of  her  garments.  We  could 
and  would  fain  have  knelt  for  a  blessing  from  that  great 
servant  of  God, — the  little  sickly  maid  brought  up  in  the 
cooper’ s  poor  cottage  in  Burgundy  ! 

And  how  many  others  like  herself,  born  in  poverty,  but 


220 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


trained  to  that  divine  generosity,  which  is  the  soul  of  Cath¬ 
olic  spiritual  life,  were  drawn  to  the  saintly  foundress  by 
the  charm  of  her  humility,  her  gentleness,  her  greatness  of 
soul,  her  consuming  love  of  our  Crucified  Lord  ! 

Who  has  done  most  for  His  glory  and  for  the  true  welfare 
of  the  race,  the  lowly-born  French  girl,  who  was  worthy  to 
be  the  parent  of  so  wide-spread  and  so  thrifty  a  spiritual 
family,  or  the  noble  scion  of  the  Mastai-Ferretti,  raised  so 
unwillingly  to  the  papal  throne,  and  governing  the  Church 
amid  trials  far  more  searching  and  destructive  than  the  per¬ 
secution  of  Decian  or  Domitian  \  Their  lives  have  run  par¬ 
allel  for  three-quarters  of  a  century,  and  were  both  ani¬ 
mated  by  that  same  heroic  generosity  which  knew  not  how 
to  refuse  aught  to  God  or  to  the  neighbor’s  need. 

EDUCATION  A  CREATION. 

The  beautiful  languages  of  the  nations  once  the  most 
Catholic  in  Christendom, — Spain,  Italy,  and  Portugal, — ex¬ 
press  the  idea  and  work  of  education  by  that  equivalent 
to  u  create.”  And  a  recent  traveler  in  the  last-named  king¬ 
dom,  who  speaks  most  highly  of  the  civilization  of  the 
“ unlettered”  peasantry,  deserves  to  be  quoted  here.  “To 
say  of  a  Portuguese  that  he  is  mal  creado — ill  brought  up, 
ill-bred — is  still  the  greatest  of  reproaches.  The  exceptions 
to  this  universal  good-breeding  are  to  be  seen  among  the 
lower  middle-classes,  with  whom  liberal  ideas  are  happily  (?) 
become  common,  but  who  appear  to  think,  with  liberals 
elsewhere,  that  discourtesy  is  equivalent  to  an  assertion  of 
equality.  It  has  frequently  been  noticed  that,  in  Portugal, 
the  best  manners  are  to  be  found  in  the  very  highest  and 
the  very  lowest  classes.  The  middle  classes,  as  a  rule,  how¬ 
ever,  sin  rather  from  an  excess  than  from  a  want  of  man¬ 
ners  ;  they  are,  like  some  vulgar  people  at  home,  far  too 
anxious  to  show  that  they  know  how  to  behave.  They  are 
too  ceremonious  to  be  perfectly  courteous.”  * 


*  John  Latouche,  “  Travels  in  Portugal,”  pp.  G4,  G5. 


EDUCATION  A  CREATION. 


221 


We  are  glad  to  insert  this  extract  here,  both  to  show  our 
readers  what  the  genuine  notion  of  education  is,  and  what 
effect  it  produces  on  men’s  manners  and  speech  in  their  in¬ 
tercourse  with  each  other.  We  shall  revert  to  this  perfect 
courtesy  a  little  further  on.  At  x>resent  our  object  is  to 
show  the  effect  of  education  on  the  soul  itself.  And  here 
it  is  that  we  beg  parents  to  consider  seriously  how  divine  a 
work  is  theirs. 

Education  does  literally  complete  in  the  child  the  work 
of  the  Creator.  Only  think  of  it.  It  is  a  wonderful  thing 
to  see  how  from  the  acorn  planted  in  the  ground  a  little 
pair  of  leaflets  will  bud  forth,  and  then  a  tiny  stem,  which 
will  grow  taller  and  taller  each  day,  each  month,  each  year, 
putting  forth  branches,  when  in  the  open,  to  catch  the  rain 
and  the  dew,  and  to  balance  itself  against  every  wind  that 
blows,  waxing  strong  in  sunshine  and  in  storm  till  it  be¬ 
comes  the  ornament  of  the  field  or  the  hillside,  and  outliv¬ 
ing  for  centuries  the  man  who  planted  it  and  nursed  it  in 
its  helplessness. 

See  how  the  sculx>tor  will  take  a  block  of  marble  from  the 
quarry,  and  from  this  rough  and  shapeless  mass  with  mallet 
and  chisel  form  a  figure  so  beautiful,  so  life-like  that  it 
seems  to  speak  to  you  and  almost  about  to  move.  And  see, 
also,  the  great  painter  Lionardo,  at  work  on  a  naked  wall 
in  a  refectory  of  monks.  He  wishes  to  represent  the  Master 
seated  at  table  for  the  last  time  with  the  Twelve  whom  he 
had  chosen  to  be  the  teachers  and  x>arents  of  a  new  spiritual 
world.  Figure  after  figure  is  sketched  and  colored  along 
that  table,  and  on  each  side  of  the  Master,  till  the  whole  is 
completed  ;  and  when  the  great  workman  unvails  his  mas- 
teiquece  to  the  gaze  of  the  long-expectant  brotherhood,  one 
rapturous  cry  of  admiration  bursts  forth:  “It  is  a  crea¬ 
tion  !  ’  ’  The  Divine  One  is  there,  his  heart  preparing  to  be¬ 
stow  on  them,  and  on  the  world  through  them,  his  divines t 
gift,  and  he  foresees  how,  within  a  few  hours,  one  of  those 
present  will  deliver  him  up  to  his  enemies,  and  how  all  will 
forsake  him  in  his  need.  You  almost  hear  him  say  mourn¬ 
fully  :  “  Amen  I  say  to  you,  that  one  of  you  is  about  to  be- 


222 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


tray  me.”  While  the  figures  which  start  up  around  seem 
to  reply  by  look  or  gesture  :  “ Is  it  I,  Lord?” 

All  these  wonders  of  art  and  industry  are,  in  their  impor¬ 
tance,  not  to  be  compared  to  the  divine  work  of  education, 
its  effects  in  the  soul,  and  its  consequences  on  the  life  of  the 
individual  and  all  dependent  on  his  good  or  evil  deeds. 

It  is  for  the  mother  by  her  intelligence,  patience,  gentle¬ 
ness,  and  unwearied  love  to  call  forth  in  the  soul  of  each  of 
her  children  the  mighty  virtues  lying  there  as  in  a  rich  soil 
only  awaiting  the  skillful  hand  of  the  husbandman. 

We  are  principally  occupied  with  the  culture  of  the 
heart.  Create  generosity  in  it :  we  have  already  seen  how 
a  beginning  can  be  made  in  the  babe  ;  now  let  us  study  its 
further  progress  in  the  boy  and  girl.  - 

GENEROSITY  IN'  CONQUERING  SELF. 

We  know  as  well  what  are  the  baneful  fruits  of  selfish¬ 
ness  and  self-indulgence.  We  have  laid  down  unselfish¬ 
ness  as  the  primary  virtue  not  of  motherhood  only  but  of 
true  womanhood.  Should  any  one  of  the  mothers  who  may 
be  interested  in  these  lessons,  find,  on  examining  her  con¬ 
science,  that  she  is  still  too  much  in  love  with  self,  then  let 
her  learn  to  overcome  herself  while  teaching  her  child  this 
indispensable  virtue  of  self-denial.  There  is  not  a  moment 
to  be  lost.  Bad  habits  take  root  with  fearful  rapidity  even 
in  the  richest  natures.  They  grow  and  ripen  and  bear  their 
fruit,  like  southern  vines  and  weeds,  almost  in  a  single  day 
and  night.  Crush  them,  pluck  them  out  pitilessly  from 
their  very  first  appearance,  and  do  not  weary  of  the  labor 
of  rooting  them  out  again  and  again.  For,  your  child’ s  sal¬ 
vation  depends  on  your  sleepless  watchfulness  and  perse¬ 
verance. 

The  most  successful  method,  however,  consists  in  accus¬ 
toming  your  child  to  continual  acts  of  the  virtues  opposed 
to  selfishness. 

Teach  them  not  to  yield  easily  to  the  natural  sympathies 
and  preferences  which  arise  among  brothers  and  sisters,  and 


GENEROSITY  IN  CONQUERING  SELF. 


223 


which  often  prove  so  fruitful  a  source  of  domestic  discord, 
strife,  and  misery.  It  is,  even  in  the  child,  sellishness 
which  inclines  it  to  love  all  who  are  of  its  own  disposition, 
who  please  it  and  pet  it.  Make  the  child  be  kind  to  every 
one  of  its  brothers  and  sisters  without  distinction.  But 
should  it  so  happen  that  it  have  a  dislike  for  any  one  of 
them  in  particular,  accustom  it  to  show  this  one  some 
special  mark  of  affection  and  kindness. 

No  little  strength  is  imparted  to  the  childish  character  by 
thus  early  accustoming  it  to  be  generous  in  overcoming  its 
likings  and  dislikes  where  these  are  unfounded,  or  of  a 
nature  to  breed  mischief  when  allowed  to  grow.  Besides, 
the  exercise  of  this  same  generosity  of  will  is  of  scarcely 
less  importance  toward  the  child’s  outside  playmates  and 
acquaintance.  Many  a  fatal  friendship  has  sprung  up  at 
the  age  of  ten  or  twelve.  This  very  morning’ s  papers  record 
the  sudden  death  from  heart  disease  of  a  poor  hard-working 
and  virtuous  mother,  whose  son, — perhaps  an  only  son, — 
had  contracted,  in  spite  of  repeated  warnings  and  chastise¬ 
ment,  an  intimacy  with  a  boy  of  his  own  age.  The  latter 
exercised  a  sort  of  fascination  over  all  those  of  his  years 
in  the  crowded  quarter  where  they  lived,  organized  a  band 
of  juvenile  libertines,  thieves,  and  burglars ;  and  gave  the 
police  a  world  of  trouble. 

A  burglary  was  committed  and  traced  to  the  two  lads ; 
and  the  tempter  and  his  victim  were  seized  by  a  detective 
just  as  they  were  about  to  enter  the  latter’s  home.  The 
poor  anxious  mother  had  been  watching  all  the  livelong 
night  near  her  window  for  her  absent  boy — he  is  only  a  boy 
— judging  that  he  was  in  some  trouble  or  danger.  She  had 
fallen  into  a  slumber  toward  morning  when  the  noise  at  the 
door  startled  her  ;  and,  on  opening  her  window,  she  saw 
them  handcuffing  her  child.  There  was  a  faint  scream 
which  awakened  the  husband,  and  then  a  low  moan,  while 
she  pressed  her  hands  on  her  heart.  ‘  ‘  Oh  !  the  pain  I  have 
here  !  ”  And  she  was  dead. 

Had  she  been  neglectful  of  her  duty  toward  that  child  ? 
Alas,  but  few,  very  few  among  mothers  of  that  class,  living 


224 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


in  such  awful  neighborhoods,  are  careful  to  do  what  we  are 
here  endeavoring  to  inculcate, — to  check  the  very  first  be¬ 
ginnings  of  intimacy  and  companionship  with  all  who  are 
not  thoroughly  good. 

TEACH  THEM  GENEROSITY  IN  THE  EXERCISE  OF  THE  HOME 

CHARITIES. 

Home  is,  or  always  should  be,  the  school  where  the  child 
should  learn  this  practical  generosity.  There  are  aged  per¬ 
sons  in  the  home  ;  and  what  household  is  complete  or  com¬ 
pletely  blessed  without  venerable  age  ?  There  is  nothing  so 
beautiful  among  men  as  age  :  its  very  wrinkles  and  infirm¬ 
ities  are  eloquent  of  the  battle  of  life  well  fought  and  the 
glorious  victory  won.  The  fruit  tree  in  spring,  when  it  is 
covered  with  the  tender  green  of  its  leaves  and  the  lovely 
tints  of  its  blossoms,  is  a  charming  object  to  the  sense  ;  but 
this  bloom  only  lasts  a  few  days,  the  blossoms  drop  with 
the  first  blast  or  the  first  rain, — and  then  all  nature’s  labor 
through  the  remaining  spring,  summer,  and  autumn  is  to 
increase  and  ripen  the  fruit.  When  they  hang  in  all  their 
mellow  richness  from  the  branches  at  the  end  of  the  fine 
season,  do  not  complain  that  the  flowers  are  no  longer 
there,  that  the  few  leaves  left  are  discolored  or  shriveled, 
and  ready  to  fall  to  the  ground.  Leaves  and  flowers,  dew 
and  rain  and  sunshine,  the  rich  moisture  of  the  earth  and 
the  blessed  warmth  of  the  air, — all  worked  together  to  bring 
forth  fruit  on  that  tree.  Is  the  fruit  there  ?  Are  the 
branches  bending  beneath  their  load  ? — Then  is  there  not  in 
garden,  field,  or  forest  a  more  precious  or  beautiful  object 
than  that  tree  with  its  golden  load  of  fruit ! 

Even  so  with  a  long  life  all  filled  with  brave  struggles 
against  poverty  and  loss  and  treachery  and  discouragement, 
— with  victories  over  one’s  own  weaknesses,  and  virtues 
ripened  in  the  soul  to  the  full  maturity  of  Christian  holi¬ 
ness, — what  is  more  glorious,  more  lovely,  more  worthy  of 
affection  and  reverence,  than  these  long  lives  with  their 
merits  and  pregnant  lessons, — just  as  the  sun  of  this  world 


TEACH  TOUR  CHILDREN  GENEROSITY. 


225 


is  setting  for  tliem  and  the  first  brightness  of  the  Eternal 
Day  is  on  their  close  ? 

We  could  kiss  the  maimed  hands  and  feet  of  the  soldier 
who  has  given  his  limbs  and  exposed  his  life  for  the  de¬ 
fense  of  our  liberty  and  our  honor !  Even  though  the 
battle  in  which  he  received  his  wounds  lasted  but  a  single 
hour,  his  glorious  scars  deserve  perpetual  remembrance  and 
gratitude.  But  when  the  hands  of  a  dear  mother,  after 
serving  us  so  long,  after  having  given  us  so  lavishly  and 
lovingly  of  the  fruits  of  her  late  and  early  toil,  and  having 
been  lifted,  morning  and  night,  for  our  dear  need  to  Him 
from  whom  all  good  descendeth, — when  these  hands  that 
have  nursed  our  helpless  infancy,  supported  and  directed 
us  through  childhood, — are  now  infirm  with  excess  of  labor 
and  trembling  with  the  chill  of  age, — shall  we  ever  touch 
them  without  kissing  them  with  infinite  reverence  %  For 
the  hands  of  a  mother  are  the  visible  image  near  to  us  on 
•  earth  of  that  Almighty  hand, — all  wisdom  and  tenderness, 
which  never  ceases  to  toil  for  us  throughout  the  unwearying 
years. 

Or,  when  the  wearied  feet  of  a  father  linger,  benumbed 
and  leaden,  near  the  hearthstone,  shall  we  not  call  to  mind 
with  swelling  hearts  the  long  and  rugged  road  over  which 
they  have  traveled,  burdened  with  the  load  of  our  manifold 
wants, — aching  and  bleeding  many  times,— and  yet  unable 
to  pause  for  rest,  for  the  love  of  us  urged  them  onward 
through  sun  and  storm,  through  ice  and  snow, — till  nature 
sank  exhausted  %  O  blessed  feet, — how  well  might  every 
true-hearted  child  not  only  venerate  the  sores  which  time 
and  long  travel  have  left  behind,  but  kiss  your  prints  along 
the  rugged  paths  through  which  you  fared  unfalteringly  for 
our  dear  sakes ! 

And  other  aged  are  often  in  the  home, — venerable  rela¬ 
tives  who  cast  their  lot  with  the  family,  or  on  whose  own 
hearthstone  there  is  nothing  left  but  the  cold  ashes  of  a 
former  warm  and  generous  hospitality  ; — or  the  stranger 
given  a  place  by  the  hearth  in  Christ’s  name,  and  to  be 
reverenced  as  his  own  person  ! 

15 


226 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


O  home-charities  of  the  Christian  family,  what  deep  and 
heavenly  love  you  lay  open  to  the  soul,  and  what  visions  of 
the  dwelling  of  the  Common  Father  above  the  skies, — where 
love  eternal  decks  out  its  most  royal  mansions  for  those 
who  are  poorest  and  lowliest  here  below  ! 

With  all  the  voices  of  our  soul  we  beseech  you,  O  mo¬ 
thers,  to  inculcate  reverence  for  the  aged, — whom  God  has 
given  you  to  love  and  venerate  in  His  own  stead.  Beauti¬ 
ful,  most  beautiful  is  this  tender  and  worshipful  regard 
which  our  holy  faith  bids  us  pay  to  gray  hairs.  It  was  a 
living  part  of  the  religion  of  our  fathers,  it  was  the  honor  of 
every  Catholic  fireside :  oh !  let  us  cherish  it  here  as  the 
sure  pledge  of  God’ s  blessing  on  our  homes,  and  the  fulfill¬ 
ment  of  the  promise  of  “long  life  in  the  land”  to  all  who 
honor  father  and  mother  and  old  age  to  the  end  !  Teach 
your  boys  and  girls  also  to 

REVERENCE  AND  WORSHIP  THE  SICK  AND  INFIRM  IN  YOUR 

HOME. 

To  the  lessons  contained  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  this 
book,  it  may  sutfice  to  add  here,  that  of  all  the  blessings 
God  may  send  to  the  home  of  such  as  love  him  truly,  none 
is  more  precious  than  the  presence  of  the  sick. 

Children  and  young  people  (at  least  where  these  have  not 
been  already  perverted  by  self-indulgence)  are  naturally 
inclined  toward  the  needy  and  suffering.  The  pale  and 
emaciated  features  of  the  sick  plead  eloquently  with  young 
and  generous  hearts,  and  their  moans  find  a  ready  echo  in 
souls  from  which  sin  has  not  banished  the  spirit  of  charity. 
It  is  for  mothers  to  foster  and  train  aright  in  the  bosoms  of 
their  boys  and  girls  this  touching  sympathy  toward  every 
kind  of  infirmity  and  disease.  There  is  One  in  the  soul  of 
your  child  who  will  not  fail  to  help  you  powerfully.  Only 
recall,  when  you  are  teaching  your  dear  ones,  how  the  Mas¬ 
ter  loved  the  sick,  and  how  he  would  have  it  that  if  they 
only  touched  the  hem  of  his  garment  with  a  lively  faith 
they  should  instantly  be  healed. 

Was  it  not  his  own  mission  of  healing  mercy  to  our  souls 


REVERENCE  AND  WORSHIP  THE  SICK. 


227 


that  he  described  so  divinely  in  the  parable  of  the  Good 
Samaritan  %  Is  not  the  office  of  that  love  which  bore  ns  in 
its  heart  from  all  eternity,  and  which  ever  stoops  to  the 
need  and  misery  of  each,  as  if  each  were  alone  in  existence, 
painted  by  the  divine  hand  in  that  alien  in  blood  and  religion 
who  forgot  the  whole  world  to  care  for  the  wonnded  man 
found  by  the  roadside, — while  priest  and  Levite,  the  fellow- 
countrymen  and  fellow-worshipers  of  the  poor  forlorn  one, 
went  to  the  other  side  of  the  road,  lest  it  should  be  thought 
they  saw  his  blood  or  heard  his  groans  \ 

Make  every  child  of  yours  know  and  feel  that  he  or  she 
is  the  poor  lost  one,  cast  all  wonnded  and  dying  by  the 
roadside,  and  so  near  the  eternal  death, — and  that  the 
friend  in  need  was  He  who  came  from  the  throne  of  heaven 
to  heal,  to  restore,  to  lift  np  to  the  height  whence  he  had 
himself  descended.  Make  them  understand, — that,  on  leav¬ 
ing  earth  again,  he  wishes  and  bids  every  one  of  ns  to  do 
for  the  sick  in  body,  in  heart,  or  in  soul,  what  he  did  for  us. 

The  Mohammedans  look  upon  idiots  and  the  insane  as 
upon  persons  specially  privileged  and  loved  of  God,  and 
treat  them  in  consequence  with  the  most  religious  reverence. 
Our  Christian  faith  teaches  us,  as  it  taught  our  fathers  from 
the  beginning,  to  consider  Christ  himself  as  being  concealed 
beneath  the  rags  of  the  beggar,  the  emaciated  or  disfigured 
form  of  the  sick,  or  the  touching  helplessness  of  the  idiot 
or  the  insane. 

In  the  Rhone  valley  a  hideous  form  of  swelling  in  the 
neck  brought  on  by  the  mineral  qualities  of  the  waters 
they  drink,  and  called  “Cretinism,”  is  accompanied,  after  a 
certain  time,  by  imbecility ;  and  the  Catholic  piety  of  the 
population  leads  them  to  look  upon  this  awful  scourge  as  a 
blessing  from  on  high,  as  a  mark  of  predestination.  Even 
the  images  of  our  crucified  Lord  are  made  with  this  de¬ 
formity, — as  if  they  applied  to  the  letter  the  prophecy  of 
Isaias :  “There  is  no  beauty  in  him,  nor  comeliness:  and 
we  have  seen  him,  and  there  was  no  sightliness.  .  .  . 

Surely  he  hath  borne  our  infirmities,  and  carried  our  sor¬ 
rows  :  and  we  have  thought  him  as  it  were  a  leper,  and  as 


228 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


one  struck  by  God  and  afflicted  ”  (ch.  liii.).  Hence,  too,  the 
unspeakably  touching  custom  during  the  Ages  of  Faith  to 
place  in  leprosy  hospitals  paintings  representing  our  Lord 
as  covered  with  that  most  loathsome  form  of  disease. 

We  have  seen  religious  communities  where  the  room  of 
a  member  afflicted  with  chronic  disease  was  a  kind  of  sanc¬ 
tuary  to  which  all  sought,  as  a  special  privilege,  the  per¬ 
mission  of  paying  a  daily  visit, — and  with  what  exquisite 
refinement  of  politeness  and  charity !  'We  have  known 
homes  where  the  presence  of  some  such  incurable  disease  or 
life-long  infirmity  was  hailed  by  parents,  children,  and  ser¬ 
vants  as  a  priceless  favor  of  the  divine  goodness  :  ,and  how 
every  act  and  industry  that  the  fondest  love  could  devise 
was  practiced  for  years  and  years  to  render  the  lot  of  the 
stricken  one  bearable,  to  make  the  sick-room  bright  and 
cheerful,  to  fill  it  with  the  most  pleasant  sights  and  sweet¬ 
est  sounds  !  The  most  delicious  fruits  were  sought  for  the 
sick  one,  and  the  most  beautiful  and  fragrant  flowers, — and 
we  have  known  the  master  of  that  home  to  permit  no  one 
but  himself  to  bathe  the  feet  of  the  sick  man, — and  on 
bended  knees,  as  if  Christ  himself  were  there.  We  have 
seen  high-born  ladies  permitting  no  hand  but  their  own 
ever  to  make  the  sufferer’s  bed,  or  decorate  the  room  with 
gay  colors,  or  wash  and  dress  the  disgusting  sores.  Think 
you  the  children  of  such  parents  will  fail  to  inherit  this 
sublime  spirit  of  faith  and  piety  \ ,  Or  that  peace  and  con¬ 
tentment,  deeper  than  the  ocean  and  sweeter  than  all  joys 
that  can  be  tasted  outside  of  that  vast  bosom  of  God  which 
is  to  be  our  home,  will  not  flood  such  hearts  and  such 
households  forever  ? 

So,  Christian  mothers,  you  will  train  your  dear  ones  to 
treat  the  sick  and  the  infirm  with  a  respect  and  a  tender¬ 
ness  equal  at  least  to  their  heartfelt  reverence  for  the  aged. 

LET  CHILDREN  AND  YOUNG  PEOPLE  GENEROUSLY  OVERLOOK 
INFIRMITIES  OF  TEMPER  IN  THE  AGED  AND  SICK. 

This  will  be  the  crown  of  your  home-charities.  For,  if 
there  are  aged  and  sick  persons  of  so  sweet  a  disposition 


GENEROSITY  IN  FORGETTING  ONE’S  PAIN 


229 


and  such  conversational  charm,  that  the  pleasure  felt  in 
one’s  intercourse  with  them  more  than  repays  any  service 
rendered,  any  effort  at  generosity  made  in  attending  to 
their  wants  or  their  gratification, — there  are  others  whose 
manners  disgust  or  whose  temper  sorely  tries  all  who  ap¬ 
proach  them. 

This,  however,  is  an  extreme  case.  But,  be  that  as  it 
may,  it  is  the  mother’ s  duty,  where  there  are  such  persons 
in  the  family,  to  prepare  the  children  to  expect  that  old 
persons  should  have  certain  peculiarities  which  are  to  be 
borne  with.  The  reverence  with  which  she  will  have  taught 
them  to  regard  age  in  all  persons,  will  prevent  her  dear  pu¬ 
pils  from  turning  into  ridicule  whatever  might  strike  them 
as  ludicrous.  Nay,  the  true  politeness  which  comes  from 
the  culture  of  the  heart,  and  is  the  offspring  of  piety,  will 
teach  them  to  submit  gracefully  and  lovingly  to  the  whims 
and  oddities  of  old  people, — as  well  as  to  the  irritability  of 
the  sick. 

This  generous  self-restraint  and  devotion  to  the  need  and 
comfort  of  others  is  an  admirable  discipline  for  the  young, 
as  well  as  a  rich  source  of  merit  before  the  Divine  Majesty, 
whom  the  true  children  of  G-od  profess  to  serve,  and  believe 
they  serve,  in  ministering  to  the  infirm  and  the  aged. 

GENEROSITY  IN  FORGETTING  ONE’S  PAIN,  TO  PLEASE 

OTHERS. 

This  last  and  most  important  form  of  the  home-charities 
can  be  practiced  by  children  every  day  of  their  lives.  A 
mother  well  accustomed,  in  her  unvarying  attention  to  the 
happiness  of  all  around  her,  to  forget  the  pain  that  is  tor¬ 
turing  head  and  limbs,  the  carking  care  which  is  gnawing 
at  her  heart,  and  the  grief  which  is  seldom  absent  from  the 
life  of  the  purest  and  the  best, — will  easily  succeed  in  mak¬ 
ing  her  daughters  remember  that  they  too  must  forget  their 
little  aches  and  griefs  to  make  all  pleasant  for  their  brothers 
and  sisters,  or  to  show  perfect  hospitality  to  visitors.  Nor 
will  they  have  any  difficulty  in  making  their  sons,  every 


230  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood . 

/ 

day  and  hour  of  their  lives,  give  np  out-door  pleasures  or 
pursuits  in  order  to  contribute  their  share  to  home  enjoy¬ 
ments  or  to  its  generous  hospitalities. 

One  instance  of  such  self-denial  in  a  child  of  twelve  sum¬ 
mers  may  conclude  not  unaptly  this  fundamental  doctrine 
on  generosity.  She,  as  well  as  her  older  sisters,  had  been 
taught  by  the  example  of  both  her  parents  to  devote  her¬ 
self,  in  spite  of  headaches  or  other  such  slight  ailments,  to 
make  the  evenings  in  the  family  circle  delightful  or  to  give 
up  her  whole  time  to  the  entertainment  of  guests.  In  the 
absence  of  the  mother  this  became  the  all-important  duty 
of  her  daughters  ;  and  they,  to  gratify  their  worshiped 
mother,  vied  with  each  other  in  leaving  no  one  of  the  home- 
charities  unattended  to  while  she  was  away. 

It  so  happened  that  during  one  of  these  enforced  ab¬ 
sences  the  fatal  disease  which  carried  off  our  little  maiden 
so  suddenly,  seized  her  at  the  very  time  when  two  girls  of 
her  own  age  and  dear  friends  of  the  family,  were  visiting 
her.  The  child  was  in  an  agony  of  pain  all  day,  trying  the 
while  to  wear  her  sweet  smile,  to  play  and  sing  with  her 
friends  ; — and  lest  she  should  seem  inhospitable,  she  care¬ 
fully  concealed  her  torture  from  her  sisters, — goingfor  a  few 
moments  to  the  kitchen,  where  no  one  could  observe  her, 
and  giving  way  to  her  tears.  She  made  the  cook  promise 
that  no  one  should  know  she  was  suffering. 

And  thus  the  day  past, — and  the  long  evening  came.  But 
then,  the  pain  in  her  limbs  became  so  dreadful,  that  every 
now  and  then  she  would  cast  herself  on  the  sofa  to  find  a 
moment’s  relief.  She  took  her  share  in  all  the  amusements 
of  the  drawing-room  ;  it  was  only  remarked  that  her  eyes 
shone  with  a  preternatural  brightness  and  that  her  color 
went  and  came  very  rapidly.  She  had,  however,  no  sooner 
bidden  her  two  little  friends  good-night,  than  she  became 
insensible. 

They  laid  the  unconscious  child  on  the  sofa,  applied  in 
vain  restoratives,  and  then  bore  her  to  her  room.  But  she 
was  to  rise  no  more  from  her  bed.  During  an  entire  week 
she  raved  in  the  grasp  of  the  malignant  and  mysterious  dis- 


GENEROSITY  IN  FORGETTING  ONES  PAIN. 


231 


ease  which  had  seized  upon  her,  unable  to  recognize  even 
her  father,  but  calling  piteously  and  continually  for  her 
absent  mother.  She,  with  her  eldest  daughter,  was  hun¬ 
dreds  of  miles  away  by  the  sick-bed  of  her  own  parent. 
The  latter,  when  the  telegraph  summoned  her  visitors  away, 
would  not  even  hear  of  her  grand-daughter’ s  remaining 
with  her,  and  chose  to  suffer  alone  in  her  widowed  home, 
bidding  her  children  imperatively  not  to  delay  one  moment. 

They  did  not  arrive  a  moment  too  soon.  It  was  midnight 
when  they  entered  the  sick-chamber  ;  the  terrible  spasms  of 
the  preceding  days  had  now  given  place  to  a  deep  lethargy, 
the  evident  forerunner  of  death.  The  poor  mother,  who 
expected  every  minute  to  be  the  last,  sat  tearful  but  re¬ 
signed  to  the  coming  of  the  dread  angel,  praying  with  her 
whole  soul  that  her  child  might  recover  consciousness,  were 
it  only  to  know  that  her  mother  was  by  her  side.  Suddenly, 
at  the  first  break  of  dawn,  the  little  sufferer  opened  her  eyes, 
a  preternatural  light  overspread  her  features,  and  stretching 
forth  her  arms,  “  Oh,  mama  !  ”  she  said,  “  I  am  so  glad  you 
have  come  home  again  !  ”  Then  raising  herself,  she  clasped 
her  weeping  parent  round  the  neck  and  drew  her  down  on 
the  pillow.  “Dear  mama,”  she  continued,  “I  have  been 
very  ill  since  you  went  away.”  Her  parent  tried  to  soothe 
her  ;  but  as  the  patient  perceived  her  youngest  sister  stand¬ 
ing  near,  “  Oh  !  L - ,”  she  said,  “  you  can  now  have  my  blue 

ribbon”  (a  favorite  ornament).  And  with  one  look  of  in¬ 
expressible  tenderness  at  her  mother,  and  drawing  what 
seemed  a  deep  sigh  of  relief,  she  closed  her  eyes,  and  gave 
her  soul  to  the  embrace  of  the  divine  messenger. 

She  had  been  preparing,  with  angelic  fervor,  for  her  first 

communion,  and  would  have  made  it  ere  the  end  of  the 

• 

month.  On  the  Sunday  before  her  illness  she  had,  as 
usual,  gone  to  early  mass  in  her  parish  church.  She  begged 
her  brother  and  youngest  sister,  when  the  service  was 
ended,  to  go  home  without  her,  while  she  remained  to  pray 
a  little  longer.  To  their  remonstrances  she  replied  that  she 
wanted  to  ask  for  the  grace  of  a  happy  death.  “You 
know,  dear,”  she  pleaded,  “that  one  may  die  suddenly.” 


232 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


The  malignant  pustule  which  soon  manifested  itself  gave  no 
sign  of  its  presence  when  the  words  were  uttered. 

Scarcely  four  hours  had  elapsed  after  that  most  innocent 
soul  had  been  borne  away,  when  the  body  was  so  blackened 
that  it  had  to  be  inclosed  in  a  casket.  Yet  from  the  very 
moment  of  her  passing  away  so  sweet  and  strange  an  odor 
filled  the  room  that  the  whole  household  as  well  as  stran¬ 
gers  marveled  at  it, — so  unlike  was  the  fragrance  to  any  per¬ 
fume  of  earth.  And  when,  later,  the  family  changed  their 
residence,  two  of  the  deceased  child’s  sisters  visited  her 
room  to  ascertain  whether  the  odor  still  clung  to  it.  It 
was  there  still  like  an  atmosphere  of  purity  and  virginal 
holiness  ! 

Well  might  the  gentle  mother,  for  whom  this  bereavement 
was  only  the  beginning  of  a  long  series  of  visits  from  the 
Holy  Angel,  Death,  console  herself  with  the  remembrance 
of  the  angelic  goodness  and  generosity  of  which  her  own 
life  was  an  eloquent  lesson. 


“  She  came,  as  comes  the  summer  wind, 

A  gust  of  beauty  to  my  heart  ; 

Then  swept  away,  but  left  behind 
Emotions  which  shall  not  depart. 
Unheralded  she  came  and  went, 

Like  music  in  the  silent  night — 

Which,  when  the  burdened  air  is  spent. 
Bequeaths  to  memory  its  delight. 

Or  like  the  sudden  April  bow 
That  spans  the  violet-waking  rain. 

She  bade  those  blessed  flowers  to  grow 
Which  may  not  fall  or  fade  again  ; 

For  sweeter  than  all  things  most  sweet 
And  fairer  than  all  things  most  fair. 

She  came,  and  passed  with  footsteps  fleet, 
A  shining  wonder  in  the  air  !  * 


What  a  recompense  for  all  a  mother’ s  generous  nurture  ! 
But  more  lasting  among  men  than  all  the  glory  of  heroic 
deeds  is  the  memory  of  holiness  in  youth,  the  “  sweet  odor 


*  Buchanan  Read. 


GENEROSITY  IN  OUT-DOOR  CHARITIES. 


233 


of  Christ”  embalming  not  only  the  household  amid  which 
the  sweet  flower  of  generosity  and  self-sacrifice  bloomed, — 
but  every  home  into  which  the  influence  of  such  examples 
penetrates. 

GENEROSITY  IN  PRACTICING  THE  OUT-DOOR  CHARITIES. 

As  every  mother, — whether  her  home  be  that  of  the 
laboring  man,  or  that  of  the  rich  man  or  the  noble, — has  a 
deep  interest  in  the  poor  round  about,  and  a  divine  obliga¬ 
tion  to  fulfill  toward  them  in  proportion  to  her  means,  so  is 
it  her  duty  to  train  her  children  to  aid  her  in  ministering  to 
them.  We  remember  a  baker’s  wife,  with  eight  children, 
girls  nearly  all  of  them,  and  whose  husband  was  not  trou¬ 
bled  with  much  money  in  bank, — who  never  failed  during 
the  most  inclement  winter’s  weather  to  go  out  with  one  of 
her  children  to  bring  bread  to  a  number  of  poor  families  in 
pressing  need  of  relief.  Winter  and  summer,  long  before 
the  break  of  day,  she  and  her  companion,  with  their  full 
basket,  would  sally  forth,  making  their  visits  rapidly,  and 
then  stopping  at  the  nearest  church  to  hear  mass,  before 
they  broke  their  fast.  To  be  mother’s  companion  in  this 
early  excursion  was  a  privilege  eagerly  contended  for  by  all 
her  children,  and  often  granted  as  a  reward  for  success  at 
school  or  steady  amendment  at  home.  And  the  baker  him¬ 
self,  when  his  oldest  boy  could  superintend  the  business 
during  the  early  morning,  would  joyously  take  the  basket 
and  trudge  along  beside  his  wife,  through  rain  and  sleet  and 
snow!  He  “wanted,”  he  said,  “to  have  a  kind  word  and 
a  blessing  from  the  sick  as  well  as  his  w  if e ; 5  ’  and  when 
almost  paralyzed  by  rheumatism,  he  still  persisted  in  tak¬ 
ing  his  turn, — he  would  reply  to  the  pleading  of  his  sons 
and  daughters  :  “  Rest !  and  sleep  a  little  longer  ! — no,  no  ! 
I  shall  have  a  long  sleep  in  the  grave  ;  and  heaven  will  be 
a  good  place  to  rest  in.”  He  was  called  to  it  all  too  early, 
the  royal-souled  man.  .  .  .  But  he  left  behind  him 

children  who  made  it  their  happiness  and  glory  to  imitate 
him,  and  to  be  thereby  worthy  of  their  mother, — the  guide 


234 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


of  both  father  and  children  in  every  good  work  and  every 
home-virtne. 

A  PATEIAECHAL  FAMILY. 

Let  ns  conclude  our  instruction  on  this  matter  by  men¬ 
tioning  a  family  whose  name  is  still  held  in  benediction 
throughout  the  North  of  France — the  family  of  M.  Dubois 
of  Valenciennes.  This  man,  one  of  the  angels  of  God  to  the 
poor  and  the  persecuted  during  the  great  French  Revolution, 
had  been  twice  married  ;  but,  as  we  were  assured  by  one 
of  them,  the  children  of  the  second  wife  grew  to  manhood 
and  womanhood  before  they  knew  that  she  who  was  their 
mother  was  not  the  mother  of  their  elder  brothers  and  sis¬ 
ters.  Twenty  children  had  sprung  from  these  two  mar¬ 
riages  ;  and,  at  the  epoch  of  the  father’ s  death,  nearly  one 
hundred  of  his  descendants  knelt  around  his  bed  to  receive 
his  blessing. 

Though  he  was  then  the  possessor  of  a  large  fortune, — 
far  more  than  he  possessed  had  been  distributed  to  the  poor 
or  bestowed  in  good  works,  during  his  lifetime,  by  himself 
and  his  sons  and  daughters  under  his  direction.  Indeed  he 
was  known  and  revered  far  and  wide  as  the  father  of  the 
poor. 

After  his  funeral,  and  the  reading  of  the  will,  his  sons 
and  grandsons  would  not  separate  till  they  had  agreed  to 
take  on  themselves,  each  some  one  of  the  favorite  good 
works  and  charities  of  their  parent.  The  eldest  son  allowed 
all  his  juniors  to  make  their  choice;  “and,”  said  our  in¬ 
formant,  ‘  ‘  they  seemed  to  have  all  of  them  quite  enough  in 
what  was  allowed  to  them  ;  while  to  the  eldest  fell  the 
‘discipline’  or  scourge,  and  the  hair  shirt  used  by  the 
saintly  dead  to  keep  his  own  body  in  subjection.  But  to 
every  one  of  that  noble  race  had  descended  unimpaired  the 
faith  and  generosity  of  their  heroic  ancestors.” 

Such  are  the  results  of  Catholic  piety  where  the  Spirit  of 
God  is  allowed  to  reign  both  in  homes  and  in  hearts  ;  such 
the  generously-tempered  souls,  in  the  palace  as  well  as  in 


A  TERRIBLE  LESSON  FOR  THE  SELF-INDULGENT.  235 

the  cottage,  which  true  Christian  mothers  form  when  they 
do  their  work  well.  But  what  shall  we  think  of  such 
women  as  are  painted  in  the  following  passages  : 

“When  we  observe  women  for  whom  silk  is  too  rough, 
whom  a  rose-leaf  wounds,  who  swoon  at  the  least  sound, 
who  cannot  pronounce  their  words  whole,  who,  forgetting 
their  own  affairs,  attend  to  those  of  others,  whose  lives  pass 
in  visiting  their  pretended  friends,  who  are  found  at  all 
parties,  who  are  pleased  in  worldly  societies,  in  splendid 
entertainments,  and  cannot  live  retired  in  their  houses,  who 
must  know  all  the  stories  of  the  town,  whose  curiosity  im¬ 
pels  them  to  go  everywhere,  who  can  invent  false  reports, 
and  can  rekindle  old  hatreds, — when  we  consider  what  these 
persons  ought  to  be,  and  what  they  are,  .  .  .  it  is  diffi¬ 

cult  not  to  feel  an  indignation  which  is  itself  admonitory 
and  instructive ;  for  then  we  shall  call  to  mind  that  the 
Catholic  religion,  which  denounced  such  manners  as  in¬ 
famous,  furnishes  the  best  security  against  their  recur¬ 
rence.’  ’  * 

A  TEEEIBLE  LESSON  FOE  THE  SELF-INDULGENT. 

Finally,  should  our  readers  be  tempted  to  think  that  the 
piety  and  generosity  of  M.  Dubois  and  his  family  are  not 
suited  to  our  climate  or  our  epoch,  we  should  commend  to 
their  attention  this  one  example  : 

“A  Duke  of  Venice  had  for  a  wife  a  lady  of  Constanti¬ 
nople,  who  lived  with  such  delicacy  that  she  actually  dis¬ 
dained  to  use  common  water  for  her  ablutions  ;  but  her  ser¬ 
vants  were  employed  to  collect  the  dew  from  heaven,  with 
which  her  baths  were  formed.  In  eating  she  would  use 
only  golden  forks ;  and  her  chambers  were  all  perfumed 
with  every  kind  of  precious  odor.  How  hateful  to  God  was 
such  pride  appeared  afterward  from  the  horrible  maladies 
with  which  He  visited  her,  so  that  no  one  could  approach 
her  without  a  sensation  of  horror.”  f 


*  Luis  de  Leon,  quoted  in  Compitum,  b.  i.,  c.  iv.,  p.  107. 


f  Ibidem. 


236 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TREE  WOMANHOOD. 


MAKE  NOT  THE  BREAD  OF  HOSPITALITY  BITTER. 

And  so,  with  one  other  word  of  exhortation,  we  close  this 
chapter.  Among  the  many  outside  of  one’s  home  to  whom 
charity  in  its  most  blessed  form  will  prove  a  most  welcome 
visitor,  there  will  be  found  persons  too  proud  to  make  their 
wants  known,  and  too  sensitive  about  accepting  any  aid, 
even  when  at  their  utmost  need.  And  such  persons  are  as 
numerous  among  the  poorer  classes  as  among  the  rich  and 
the  well-born. 

Find  out  these  shrinking  ones.  Approach  them  with 
more  respect  than  you  would  show  to  king  or  queen,  or 
pope  or  president.  Your  heart  will  teach  you  how  to  make 
the  much-needed  relief  acceptable.  For  the  heart  has  in¬ 
finite  delicacy.  And  when  you  have  discovered  these  hid¬ 
den  sufferers  from  want,  — not  only  must  you  be  careful  not 
to  pry  into  their  lives  or  to  show  a  curiosity  which  would 
be  resented  because  it  wounds  cruelly, — but  you  must  con¬ 
ceal  names  and  facts  from  everybody  as  sacredly  as  you 
would  guard  the  secrets  of  your  own  soul. 

There  are  families  unwearied  in  their  efforts  to  find  out 
such  cases  of  distress  and  meritorious  charity  as  we  here 
point  out,  and  who,  when  the  sufferers  belong  to  their  own 
class,  are  most  ingenious  in  making  their  own  homes  ac¬ 
ceptable  and  delightful  to  these  homeless  ones.  Oh  !  it  is 
the  luxury  of  doing  good  rewarded  by  an  interior  sweetness 
beyond  the  power  of  expression. 

But  let  us  remember,  when  such  sufferers  are  admitted 
to  our  hospitality,  that  no  act  or  effort  should  be  neglected 
to  make  the  bread  we  break  to  them  sweet  and  the  wine  of 
our  generosity  not  bitter,  by  cold  looks  or  any  thing  that 
might  savor  of  weariness  or  neglect. 

Familiar  to  all  during  the  last  six  centuries  has  been  the 
cruel  inhospitality  of  the  Lord  of  Verona  to  the  exiled 
Dante,  Italy’ s  greatest  poet,  as  well  as  the  immortal  lines 
in  which  the  latter  has  preserved  the  memory  of  his  enter¬ 
tainer’s  baseness. 


MAKE  NOT  TEE  BREAD  OF  HOSPITALITY  BITTER.  237 

“  Yea,  you  shall  learn  how  salt  his  food  who  fares 
Upon  another’s  bread, — how  steep  his  path 

Who  treadeth  up  and  down  another’s  stairs.”  * 

A  modern  poet  lias  commented  tlie  tale  in  verse  not  un¬ 
worthy  of  the  Great  Florentine. 

i  j  i.  _ .  ■ 

“  Arriving  only  to  depart, 

From  court  to  court,  from  land  to  land. 

Like  flame  within  the  naked  hand 
His  body  bore  his  burning  heart 

That  still  on  Florence  sought  to  bring 
God’s  fire  for  a  burnt  offering. 

“And  Can  La  Scala  marked  askance 

These  things,  accepting  them  for  shame 
And  scorn,  till  Dante’s  guestship  came 
To  be  a  peevish  sufferance  : 

His  host  sought  ways  to  make  his  days 
Hateful  ;  and  such  have  many  ways. 

“  Therefore  the  bread  he  had  to  eat 

Seemed  brackish,  less  like  corn  than  tares  ; 

And  the  rusli-strown  accustomed  stairs 
Each  day  were  steeper  to  his  feet  ; 

And  when  the  night- vigil  was  done. 

His  brows  would  ache  to  feel  the  sun. 

“  He  went  and  turned  not.  From  his  shoes 
It  may  be  that  he  shook  the  dust. 

As  every  righteous  dealer  must 
Once  and  again  ere  life  can  close  : 

And  unaccomplished  destiny 
Struck  cold  his  forhead,  it  may  be. 

“  Eat  and  wash  hands,  Can  Grande  ; — scarce 

We  know  their  deeds  now  :  hands  which  fed 
Our  Dante  with  that  bitter  bread  ; 

And  thou,  the  watcli-dog  of  those  stairs 
Which  of  all  paths  his  feet  knew  well. 

Were  steeper  found  than  Heaven  or  Hell.”  f 

The  retribution  which  the  noble  heart  of  man  or  woman 


*  Paradiso,  xvii. 


f  Dante  Gabriel  Bossetti,  “  Dante  at  Verona.” 


238 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


would  fear  most  for  rendering  so  bitter  the  bread  given  to 
the  exile,  or  the  stranger,  or  even  the  relative,  received  into 
their  homes,  would  not  be  the  contempt  of  others,  or  even 
the  contempt  of  their  own  thoughts,  so  much  as  the  wrath 
of  that  good  God  who  is  the  certain  avenger  of  violated  hos¬ 
pitality  and  of  charity  turned  into  cruel  unkindness. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


SPECIAL  TRAINING  FOR  GIRLS  AND  FOR  BOYS. 

She  was  a  phantom  of  delight 
When  first  she  gleamed  upon  my  sight. 

I  saw  her,  upon  nearer  view, 

A  spirit,  yet  a  woman  too  ! 

Her  household  motions  light  and  free, 

And  steps  of  virgin  liberty  : 

A  countenance  in  which  did  meet 
Sweet  records,  promises  as  sweet ; 

The  reason  firm,  the  temperate  will, 

Endurance,  foresight,  strength,  and  skill 
A  perfect  woman,  nobly  planned 
To  warm,  to  comfort  and  command — 

And  yet  a  spirit  still  and  bright, 

With  something  of  an  angel  light  ! 

Wordsworth. 

Along  with  great  qualities  and  admirable  talents,  I  find  in  him  these  virtues 
without  which  all  excellence  is  deformity — namely,  modesty,  meekness,  tran¬ 
quillity,  religion,  sanctity,  and  integrity. — Lionardo  Aretino. 

Thus  far  the  instruction  given  applied  almost  equally  to 
children  of  both  sexes.  What  is  said  in  this  chapter  ad¬ 
dresses  itself  first  to  girls  and  then  to  boys,  purposing  to 
aid  the  mother  in  perfecting  the  education  of  her  daughters 
and  sons,  according  to  the  requirements  of  their  future  avo¬ 
cations. 

L 

WHAT  IS  SPECIAL  IN'  THE  HOME  EDUCATION"  OF  GIELS. 

There  ire  not  a  few  persons,  of  great  experience  in  direct¬ 
ing  souls,  who  have  been  so  dispirited  at  seeing  the  result 

239 


240 


TEE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


of  the  public  education  given  to  boys,  that  they  would  have 
parents  and  all  persons  interested  in  teaching  bestow  their 
chief  care  on  the  training  of  girls.  Whatever  may  be  the 
little  or  the  much  of  truth  in  the  theories,  arguments,  and 
facts  set  forth  by  these  persons  and  their  opponents,  it  is 
none  the  less  indisputable  that  the  ill  training  given  to 
girls,  whether  at  home  or  in  our  public  schools,  has  made 
them  the  abettors  and  counselors  of  the  dishonesty,  the  cor¬ 
ruption,  the  love  of  extravagance  and  dissipation  which  are 
producing  among  men  of  every  class  in  the  community  the 
frightful  crop  of  crime  which  is  the  most  alarming  symptom 
of  the  latter  half  of  this  nineteenth  century.  The  forgeries, 
the  wide  thirst  for  ruinous  speculation,  the  gambling  on  the 
stock-exchange,  the  betrayal  of  sacred  trust  in  offices  high 
and  low,  the  open  and  shameless  organizations  of  public 
men  in  almost  every  department  of  general  or  local  govern¬ 
ment  aiming  at  bribing  in  order  to  rob  the  public,  and  rob¬ 
bing  in  order  to  supply  the  inconceivable  extravagance  of 
their  wives  and  daughters  ; — all  this  is  due  either  to  the 
early  lack  of  strong  moral  home-culture,  to  the  neglect  of 
woman’ s  holy  influence  over  boyhood,  or  to  the  baneful  in¬ 
fluence  of  women  ill  trained  or  taught  to  look  upon  pleasure 
and  enjoyment  as  the  prime  end  of  life. 

Assuredly  if  mothers  are  only  such  as  we  have  been  de¬ 
scribing  them, — if  their  children  and  their  young  people 
are  brought  up  in  the  convictions,  the  principles,  and  the 
conscientious  practice  of  the  virtues  we  have  been  detailing, 
— our  young  girls  will  be  any  thing  but  vain,  extravagant, 
heartlessly  fond  of  admiration  and  enjoyment, — while  their 
brothers  must  be  every  thing  rather  than  the  wretched 
crowd  of  untrustworthy  spendthrifts,  forgers,  thieves,  gam¬ 
blers,  <ind  drunkards  whose  doings  are  daily  chronicled  in 
the  press. 

But  apart  from  these  degrading  and  discouraging  mani¬ 
festations  of  the  result  of  our  wide-spread  educational  sys¬ 
tems,  there  remains  to  the  Church  of  God,  and  to  the  priest 
who  does  her  work  faithfully,  the  mighty  influence  of 
Christian  motherhood  training  an  army  of  true  women  to 


SIMPLICITY  AND  SELF-DENIAL. 


241 


withstand  and  cry  down  untrustfulness,  dishonesty,  and 
corruption,  and  an  auxiliary  army  of  true  men,  to  be  in 
their  lives  the  embodiment  of  truth,  honor,  and  incorrupti¬ 
ble  integrity. 

We  do  not  know  whether  this  little  book  may  ever  reach 
the  firesides  of  Episcopalians,  Presbyterians,  or  Method¬ 
ists,  but  we  fervently  hope,  with  His  blessing  who  knows 
how  to  use  the  lowliest  instrumentalities  for  the  highest 
purposes,  that  it  may  be  of  some  utility  in  the  homes  of  our 
Catholic  millions,  and  thereby  leaven  their  hearts  and  minds 
with  that  loftiness  of  aim  and  purity  in  performance  with¬ 
out  which  neither  public  liberty  nor  national  greatness  is 
possible. 

So  then,  O  mothers,  we  are  now  in  the  very  heart  of  our 
subject ;  and  no  words  we  can  use  are  at  all  able  to  express 
the  intense  desire  we  have  to  fix  your  whole  attention  on 
what  we  are  about  to  say. 

THE  GIRLHOOD  AND  BOYHOOD  OF  TO-DAY  THE  TWIN-ROOTS 
OF  THE  SOCIETY  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

The  spirit  and  practice  of  simplicity  in  dress,  in  food,  and 
in  furniture, — the  practical  and  continual  self-denial,  which 
we  have  laid  down  as  the  very  soul  of  womanly  virtue  (as 
they  are  in  very  deed  the  soul  of  Christian  life),  must  be 
made  the  groundwork  of  the  education  you  give  your  girls. 
It  will  be  for  them,  as  it  must  have  been  for  yourselves, 
health  of  body  as  well  as  health  of  soul ;  it  will  be,  for  the 
men  and  women  of  whom  God  destines  them  to  be  the  mo¬ 
thers,  the  principle  of  strength  of  limb  and  energy  of  will, 
of  clearness  of  intellect  and  purity  of  life  ;  and  these  are  the 
men  and  women  for  which  America  and  the  whole  of  Chris¬ 
tendom  are  yearning  and  praying,  and  without  whom, 
within  a  century,  our  civilization  will  be  worse  than  heath¬ 
enism. 

SIMPLICITY  AND  SELF-DENIAL. 

There  never  yet  existed  a  perfect  man, — one  possessed  of 
that  moral  excellence  in  which  there  is  no  flaw, — who  was 
16 


242 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


not  distinguished  by  simplicity  of  character  and  a  life  of 
self-denial.  Much  more  is  this  true  of  woman.  And  why  \ 
Because  the  true  woman,  the  perfect  woman,  values  before 
and  above  every  thing  that  virtue,  that  strength  of  mind 
which  seeks  to  make  the  soul  like  unto  (Grod,  by  the  pos¬ 
session  of  perfect  knowledge  and  perfect  holiness,  and  by 
considering  external  advantages, — beauty,  wealth,  dress,  or¬ 
nament,  and  the  homage  of  others, — as  only  an  accessory 
to  greatness  of  the  soul,  and  as  utterly  valueless  when 
that  greatness  is  not  there.  These  things  do  not  make  the 
woman  or  the  man,  no  more  than  the  magnificent  robes  of 
a  feeble,  decrepit  old  king, — when  a  pageant  or  state-recep¬ 
tion  is  over, — can  help  to  conceal  the  palsied  limbs,  the 
shrunken  frame,  the  weakened  mind,  or  to  pacify  the  con¬ 
science  mindful  of  a  long  life  of  debauchery  and  tyranny. 

You  have  often  seen  women, — poor  women,  too, — so  beau¬ 
tiful*  that  no  splendor  of  dress  could  have  added  to  the 
charm  of  their  beauty  :  simplicity  alone  befits  those  things 
which  God  has  made  most  beautiful  and  most  perfect. 
Ornament  is  there  superfluous,  or  the  Creator  would  have 
added  it  ;  and  ornament  is  only  called  in  to  aid  in  conceal¬ 
ing  the  poverty  of  nature  or  of  art. 

You  have  also  seen  women, — nay,  you  know  such  in  every 
neighborhood, — to  whom,  naturally  uncomely,  or  even  ugly, 
goodness,  innocence,  holiness  lend  a  charm  so  heavenly  that 
they  are  more  than  beautiful.  The  light  of  the  beauti¬ 
ful  soul  seems,  in  such  persons,  to  pierce  the  rude  bodily 
covering,  and  overspread  the  features,  transforming  them, 
making  them  shine  with  a  splendor  which  is  not  of  earth. 

Oh  !  aim,  then,  at  possessing  first  of  all  this  unearthly 
glory  which,  though  “all  within,”  sheds  a  luster  on  the 
bodily  frame  that  ravishes  the  beholder.  We  remember  in 
one  of  the  dear  old  Catholic  homes  of  Maryland  to  have 
seen  an  aged  slave- woman,  who  had  a  merited  reputation  of 
exalted  piety,  so  transformed  while  expressing  her  anxiety 
about  the  spiritual  welfare  of  her  husband  and  son  living  in 
Louisiana,  that  her  face  shone  like  that  of  an  angel.  In¬ 
deed  it  was  impossible  to  see  this  gentle  creature  without 


SIMPLICITY  IN  DRESS. 


243 


being  impressed  with  a  feeling  akin  to  veneration, — so  visi¬ 
bly  did  the  light  of  holiness  irradiate  the  dark  and  wrinkled 
countenance !  So  was  it  with  the  venerable  Mother  Barat, 
the  foundress  of  the  Ladies  of  the  Sacred  Heart ;  and  so  with 
many  and  many  a  soul  to  whom  we  have  given  the  Bread  of 
Life  at  the  communion  table :  rays  from  behind  the  vail 
seemed  to  illumine  their  countenances  with  a  glory  that 
sent  a  thrill  to  the  soul  of  the  beholder. 

SIMPLICITY  m  DRESS. 

Beauty, — the  highest  beauty, — does  not  consist  so  much 
in  outline  and  form  as  in  expression ;  and  what  ineffable 
beauty  does  not  the  expression  of  purity  and  holiness  give 
to  the  homeliest  countenance  and  the  frailest  figure !  Cer¬ 
tain  old  earthenware  vases  were  covered  with  designs  so  ex¬ 
quisite,  and  in  colors  so  cunningly  disguised  to  an  ordinary 
observer,  that,  in  his  estimation,  they  possessed  neither 
beauty  nor  value.  But  when,  at  night,  a  light  was  placed 
within  them,  the  whole  artifice  of  the  maker  was  plain,  and 
they  were  pronounced,  most  beautiful  and  of  inestimable 
price  by  the  beholder. 

Be  ambitious  to  place  that  light, — the  light  of  that  super¬ 
natural  love  you  know  of,  — within  your  daughter’ s  soul ; 
and  fear  not  but  when  lighted  up  with  it  face  and  figure 
will  charm  all  who  look  upon  them.  This  first  labor  of 
yours  will  only  be  the  beginning  of  the  formation  of 

“  A  perfect  woman,  nobly  planned 
To  warm,  to  comfort  and  command — 

And  yet  a  spirit  still  and  bright, 

With  something  of  an  angel  light !” 

If  you  continue  to  add  to  this  sweet  simplicity  and  purity 
of  soul  that  other  sister  and  guardian  virtue,  self-denial,  as 
you  have  been  taught  in  the  preceding  chapters,  rest  as¬ 
sured  that,  at  fifteen  and  sixteen,  your  child  will  add  to  that 
angelic  expression  of  countenance 

“  The  reason  firm,  the  temperate  will, 

Endurance,  foresight,  strength,  and  skill/' 


244 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


every  thing,  in  one  word,  which  can  make  her  “  a  phantom 
of  delight  7 7  to  the  beholder. 

What  man — no  matter  how  high-born — if  his  heart  has 
not  been  corrupted  by  vicious  indulgence,  would  not  prefer 
such  “a  vision  of  purity,77  though  wearing  the  simplest 
attire,  to  a  gaudy  worldling  dressed  out  in  robes  and  jewels 
worth  a  fortune,  and  from  whose  eyes  flashes  only  the  fire  of 
earthly  passions  ? 

It  is  not  the  child  rich  in  the  priceless  treasure  of  the  vir¬ 
tues  you  thus  inculcate  who  is  likely  to  be  unsought  for  or 
unloved,  or  who,  when  she  has  been  found  by  the  man  of 
God’s  own  choice,  will  fail  to  make  his  home  a  paradise, 
and  his  whole  life  one  long  blissful  bridal  day. 

If  you  are  a  wealthy  mother,  you  will  understand  that  by 
insisting  on  this  early  love  and  practice  of  simplicity,  we  do 
not  condemn  the  richness  of  attire  suitable  to  one’s  condi¬ 
tion,  or  the  occasional  wearing  of  suitable  ornaments. 

The  habit  of  simplicity  in  girlhood  and  maidenhood  will 
be  certain  to  lead  to  appropriateness  and  good  taste  in  every 
thing,  and  throughout  life.  It  is  not  the  well-born  or  the 
well-educated,  the  simple-minded  and  pure-hearted  maidens 
of  our  true  Catholic  homes,  who  are  to  be  seen  before 
marriage  bedizened  like  the  queens  of  a  country  theater 
with  flashy  gold  ornaments  added  to  the  horror  of  the 
loudest  colors  ;  it  is  not  the  married  women  who  have  come 
from  such  homes,  after  having  been  trained  by  true  Chris¬ 
tian  mothers,  who  will  be  seen  going  through  the  markets 
with  trains  fit  only  for  a  drawing-room,  and  their  fingers  all 
aflame  with  diamonds  and  emeralds, — or  astonishing  the 
motley  crowd  packed  into  a  street-car  with  their  diamond 
ear-rings,  their  diamond  brooches,  and  their  diamond  neck¬ 
laces, — all  which  flaming  ornaments  in  such  places  adver¬ 
tise  the  wearers  as  “  shoddy,77  as  plainly  as  if  they  bore  the 
word  placarded  on  breast  and  shoulders. 

SUITABILITY  IN  DEESS  IS  NOT  EXTEA VAGANCE. 

This  beautiful  simplicity  in  dress  and  ornament  still  re¬ 
mains  as  a  relic  of  ancient  Catholic  customs  even  in  the 


SUITABILITY  IN  DRESS  IS  NOT  EXTRAVAGANCE.  245 

countries  that  have  cast  off  their  allegiance  to  the  Roman 
See.  All  through  maidenhood  girls  of  the  highest  rank 
dress  with  extreme  simplicity, — which  its  very  suitableness 
and  good  taste  compel  one  to  consider  as  elegant ; — unmar¬ 
ried  young  ladies,  though  never  so  nobly  born,  do  not  wear 
jewels,  even  on  solemn  occasions.  And  it  is  no  small  sur¬ 
prise  to  Europeans  to  see  the  fair  representatives  of  Young 
America  displaying  such  a  wealth  of  ornament  on  their 
travels, — as  if  they  were  jewelers’  daughters  sent  in  ad¬ 
vance  of  their  fathers  to  advertise  their  pearls  and  precious 
stones  ! 

It  should  be  known,  however,  that  old  American  families 
are  just  as  chary  of  displaying  their  family  jewels  on  any 
but  extraordinary  occasions  as  the  ancient  aristocracy  of 
England,  France,  Italy,  or  Spain. 

This  same  habit  of  simplicity  and  sense  of  appropriate¬ 
ness  have  another  remarkable  effect  in  old  Catholic  lands. 
In  Spain  and  Portugal  women  of  every  rank,  young  and 
old,  married  and  unmarried,  never  attend  church  save 
dressed  in  black  and  deeply  vailed.  The  highest  and 
wealthiest  have  a  little  mat  brought  with  them  to  the 
church,  on  which  they  sit  or  kneel  during  the  service. 
There  are  no  pews,  and  no  carpets,  to  preserve  the  wor¬ 
shipers  from  contact  with  the  cold  marble  or  tiles  of  the 
floor.  The  gentlemen  always  stand,  no  matter  how  long 
the  service  or  tedious  the  sermons. 

The  same  custom  prevailed  all  over  Christendom  before 
the  Reformation  :  one  not  unlike  it  rules  in  many  parts  of 
Italy  and  France,  in  spite  of  the  sad  changes  brought  about 
by  revolutionary  impiety.  At  any  rate,  the  practice  points 
to  the  beautiful  discipline  of  the  Church  in  times  when  she 
was  powerful  enough  to  enforce  her  own  regulations  ;  and 
the  austere  simplicity  and  sentiment  of  equality  which  un¬ 
derlie  the  custom,  embody  her  doctrine  and  feeling. 

They  are  in  marked  contrast  with  the  luxuriousness  with 
which  so  many  of  our  fashionable  churches  are  fitted  up, 
and  with  the  extravagance  of  the  women  who  frequent 
them  at  late  service, — the  wealthy  dressing  as  if  the  house 


246 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


of  God  were  the  temple  of  Vanity,  and  the  poor  either  ex¬ 
cluded  by  their  very  poverty  or  shamed  into  staying  away 
lest  their  poor  attire  should  provoke  the  sneers  of  the  rich. 
With  Protestant  denominations,  among  whom  this  scan¬ 
dal  is  so  general,  where  the  church  edifice  belongs  to  the 
society  of  worshipers,  and  where  a  wealthy  few  own  and 
furnish  it  and  hire  the  preacher, — we  have  nothing  to  do. 
We  only  pray  that  the  day  may  be  far  distant  indeed  when 
the  Divine  Sacrifice  of  the  New  Law,  at  which  all  Catholics 
are  bound  to  be  present,  shall  fail  to  have  around  its  altars 
the  crowd  of  the  poor  and  the  lowly  so  dear  to  the  heart  of 
the  Great  Victim  ! 

But  the  very  mention  of  this  Victim  and  this  blessed 
daily  sacrifice,  with  all  the  sublime  and  comforting  realities 
which  cluster  around  it, — should  be  enough  to  recall  to  the 
mind  of  every  believing  man  and  woman  how  monstrous  it 
seems  to  make  of  the  solemn  celebration  of  the  death  of 
Him  who  died  hanging  naked,  humiliated,  and  soul-stricken 
on  the  bitter  tree,  an  occasion  of  displaying  vanity  in  dress 
and  levity  in  deportment. 

Oh  !  how  true  to  the  divine  reality  of  the  sacrifice  is  the 
beautiful  Spanish  custom,  which  bade  women  come  to  mass 
attired  as  if  they  were  there  to  mourn  with  the  Mother  of 
Sorrows,  and  men  to  stand  upright  in  their  strength,  as  if 
they  emulated  the  beloved  disciple,  who  stood  with  Mary 
beneath  the  cross  during  the  three  long  hours  of  His  terrible 
agony  !  And  shall  we  Catholics  in  this  nineteenth  century 
allow  the  glorious  piety  of  our  fathers  to  die  out  in  our 
souls,  and  our  churches  to  be  other  than  the  temples  of  the 
Lamb,  where  we  should  meet  half  in  joy  and  half  in  sorrow 
beneath  the  shadow  of  the  cross  and  its  Victim,  to  taste  in 
our  heart  of  hearts  the  bitter-sweet  of  the  great  commem¬ 
oration  ? 

ALWAYS  DRESS  SIMPLY  AND  MODESTLY  FOR  MASS. 

Do  so  yourselves,  mothers, — and  for  the  deep  reasons  we 
have  just  given  ;  and  never  fail  to  make  your  daughters  do 


WUAT  YOUR  DAUGHTERS  ARE  TO  READ. 


247 


so  from  tlieir  earliest  years  till  they  pass  out  of  your  con¬ 
trol.  If  you  are  rich — and  we  suppose  you  are — your  sense 
of  piety  and  of  propriety  as  well  will  dictate  to  you  what  is 
suitable.  As  to  the  poor,  let  them,  if  they  choose,  put  on 
their  best  for  the  Lord’ s  day  :  their  best  will  scarcely  be  on 
a  par  with  your  simple  and  becoming  attire, — and  thus 
there  will  be  less  of  apparent  inequality  before  that  altar, 
which  is  the  table  of  the  common  Father  in  his  earthly 
temple,  representing  the  banquet  of  the  eternal  life.  .  And, 
0  mothers,  love  yourselves  and  teach  your  children  to  love 
to  have  the  poor  around  you  and  near  you,  at  least  in  the 
house  of  their  Father  and  yours  ;  and  let  no  tyranny  of 
fashion  or  prevalence  of  unchristian  custom  ever  induce 
you  to  overlook  these  central  teachings  of  Catholic  faith  ! 

WHAT  YOUR  DAUGHTERS  ARE  TO  READ. 

Akin  to  the  fatal  passion  for  dress  is  the  still  more  fatal 
and  no  less  general  passion  for  light  reading.  We  have 
already  warned  you  against  the  danger  of  reading  every 
book  and  newspaper  they  may  chance  upon.'*  What  then 
shall  they  read?  It  would  scarcely  be  possible,  even  if  it 
were  wise,  to  give  a  list  of  books  and  publications  adapted 
to  family  reading  and  specially  suited  to  the  minds  of  chil¬ 
dren  and  young  people.  Vitally  important  as  early  reli¬ 
gious  instruction  is,  and  great  as  is  the  help  derived  from 
reading  books  treating  on  religion  and  the  men  and  matters 
connected  with  its  history  before  and  after  Christ, — it  is 
hard,  and  it  might  seem  invidious,  to  point  out  those  which 
we  deem  the  very  best  for  the  purpose  now  in  view. 

English-speaking  Catholics  labor  under  no  slight  disad¬ 
vantage  in  that  the  standard  works  of  English  literature 
are  for  the  most  part  either  not  Catholic  or  bitterly  anti- 
Catholic.  Our  language  had  been  formed,  just  as  the  ge¬ 
nius  of  the  nation  had  been  trained,  by  the  Catholic  educa¬ 
tion  of  the  eight  centuries  preceding  Elizabeth.  Just  as  the 
diction  of  Chaucer  and  Robert  Grossetete  had  ripened  into 

*  Chapter  XII.,  pp.  194,  195. 


248 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


the  style  of  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  and  Sir  Thomas  More, 
the  archenemy  broke  np  the  unity  of  Christendom  and 
separated  England  from  the  Holy  See.  The  classic  tongue 
which  Catholic  England  had  been  perfecting  and  polishing 
then  became  the  mighty  weapon  of  triumphant  heresy  and 
the  vehicle  of  a  spirit  hostile  to  the  Church  of  Saint  Bede 
and  Alfred  the  Great.  It  is  only  within  the  lifetime  of  the 
generation  not  yet  passed  away,  that  the  Catholic  worship 
was  free  under  the  British  crown,  or  that  the  English  tongue 
was  taught  to  utter  Catholic  truth  or  convey  to  men’ s  minds 
the  history,  the  doctrines,  and  the  ascetic  theology  of  the 
Great  Mother. 

Still  we  have  in  the  works  issued  within  three-quarters 
of  a  century  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  a  great  wealth 
of  Catholic  literature.  We  lack,  indeed,  many,  very  many 
— not  to  say  most — of  the  beautifully  illustrated  and  other¬ 
wise  attractive  books  destined  especially  for  childhood  and 
youth,  and  in  which  Protestant  literature  is  so  rich.  Still 
we  have  enough,  and  more  than  enough,  to  place  in  the 
homes  of  the  wealthy,  as  well  as  in  the  least  favored  homes. 
For,  during  childhood  and  early  youth,  educated  and  zealous 
mothers,  truly  Christian  teachers,  and  well-conducted  Sun¬ 
day-schools,  will  know  how  to  provide  ample  food — whole¬ 
some  and  nourishing — for  the  young  and  studious  mind. 

It  is  most  important  that  girls  should  be  even  better 
grounded  than  boys  of  their  age  in  the  clear  and  full  knowl¬ 
edge  of  Christian  doctrine,  the  Bible  history,  the  history 
of  the  Church,  the  lives  of  the  most  glorious  saints  in  every 
age,  and  in  that  beautiful  portion  of  Christian  history  which 
relates  the  rise  and  progress  of  Church  architecture,  with 
the  dependent  arts  of  painting  and  sculpture.  Such  elo¬ 
quent  works  as  those  of  Montalembert, — the  “  Life  of  St. 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary”  and  “  The  Monks  of  the  West,” — 
will  open  up  for  the  generous  mind  of  youth  prospects  so 
enchanting  and  a  world  of  heroism  so  beautiful  and  elevat¬ 
ing,  that  no  boy  or  girl  who  has  begun  them  can  help  read¬ 
ing  to  the  end  and  returning  to  the  lecture  again  and  again, 
like  the  thirsty  traveler  to  the  delicious  spring ; — and  those 


THE  WEAKNESS  OF  HERESY  AND  UNBELIEF.  249 

who  like  such  works  will  be  impatient  to  read  more, — the 
works  of  Rio  on  Christian  art  and  poetry,  those  of  Ozanam, 
of  Dom  G-ueranger,  and  many  of  Dr.  Newman’s  most  beau¬ 
tiful  volumes. 

GIRLS  TO  BE  TAUGHT  IN  GOOD  TIME  THE  WEAKNESS  OF 

HERESY  AND  UNBELIEF. 

Your  object  in  training,  instructing,  educating  your  girls 
is  to  rear  women  thoroughly  enlightened  in  all  that  can 
make  them  love  the  faith  of  their  baptism  and  enable  them 
to  explain  and  defend  it ;  to  rear  mothers  able  to  be  the  first 
and  most  successful  teachers  of  their  children  in  all  that 
pertains  to  faith  and  the  true  life, — the  life  of  the  soul. 
When  girls  have  reached  their  thirteenth  year,  they  must 
be  given  the  history  of  the  heresies  and  schisms  which  still 
live  and  set  themselves  up  against  the  authority  of  Christ’ s 
i  infallible  Church. 

They  must  be  enlightened  with  regard  to  the  present  uni¬ 
versal  war  waged  against  the  independence  of  the  Papacy, 
or  rather  against  its  temporal  sovereignty,  without  which 
no  Pope  can  exercise  freely  and  independently  the  spiri¬ 
tual  functions  of  universal  pastor.  “  What,  indeed,  is  it,” 
says  Bellarmin,  £  ‘  which  is  brought  into  question  when  there 
is  question  of  the  pontifical  supremacy  ?  It  is,  in  one  word, 
the  very  existence  of  Christianity.  For  then  the  question 
really  is,  whether  the  Church  should  continue  to  exist,  or 
fall  to  pieces  and  disappear.”  *  All  the  Protestant  sects 
unite  with  infidelity  and  revolutionism  in  urging  on  public 
opinion  and  the  States  of  what  was  once  Christendom  against 
the  Holy  See.  But  they  do  not  see  how  their  own  exist¬ 
ence,  and  that  of  the  Christian  religion  itself,  are  involved 
in  the  extinction  of  this  independence.  “The  churches  at 
enmity  with  the  universal  Church,”  says, Count  de  Maistre, 
“  subsist  notwithstanding  only  by  means  of  the  latter,  al¬ 
though  they  may  little  imagine  it ;  like  those  parasite  plants, 


*  Prcefatio  in  librum  de  Summo  Pontifice. 


250 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


those  sterile  excrescences  which  live  only  on  the  substance 
of  the  tree  that  supports  them,  and  is  impoverished  by 
them.”  * 

It  would  not  be  prudent  to  allow  one’ s  children  to  go  forth 
into  the  busy  world  and  have  their  ears  assailed  by  the 
many  objections  which  the  sects  bring  against  the  Church, 
without  having  prepared  them  beforehand  with  a  proper 
answer  to  all  and  each.  This,  of  course,  applies  mainly 
to  educated  women,  who  have  had  the  leisure  and  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  well  studying  these  doctrinal  differences.  But 
we  have  met  beneath  the  roof  of  the  laboring  man  and 
the  artisan  with  mothers  thoroughly  read  up  in  these  mat¬ 
ters,  and  well  skilled,  too,  in  the  use  of  their  theological 
weapons. 

Young  girls  are  also  to  be  warned  in  time  against  the 
arguments  used  by  infidelity  and  materialism  under  the 
name  of  “Modern  Science.”  They  are  to  be  told  that, 
apart  from  the  very  imperfect  deductions  of  some  hostile 
geologists,  there  is  not  an  argument  used  by  Darwin,  or 
Tyndall,  or  Huxley,  that  has  not  been  rehashed  from  the 
works  of  the  ancient  Greek  philosophy ;  not  a  form  of 
error  which  has  not  again  and  again  been  denounced,  re¬ 
futed,  and  anathematized  by  the  Church. 

At  the  close  of  the  last  century,  and  during  the  Reign  of 
Terror  in  France,  Count  de  Maistre  wrote:  “The  present 
generation  is  witnessing  one  of  the  greatest  spectacles  ever 
offered  to  the  eyes  of  men, — the  mortal  combat  between 
Philosophism  and  Christianity.  The  lists  are  opened,  the 
two  adversaries  are  engaged,  and  the  whole  world  is  looking 
on.”  +  Girls,  as  well  as  young  men,  are  thus  more  firmly 
grounded  in  their  faith  and  prepared  to  defend  it  against 
all  comers.  They  see  in  the  present  designs  of  Darwinians, 
radicals,  and  revolutionists  only  the  continuance  of  the  old 
warfare  against  God  and  his  truth,  and  in  their  pretended 
“new”  theories  and  discoveries  the  old,  old  tales  of  the 
father  of  lies  re-echoed  from  age  to  age  throughout  all 
time. 


*  Considerations  sur  la  France ,  p.  33.  \  Ibidem,  p.  79,  published  in  1790. 


HORROR  OF  INDECENT  PRINTS. 


251 


WHAT  GIRLS  ARE  NOT  TO  READ. 

Together  with  this  solid  and  religious  instruction,  impart 
to  every  one  of  your  girls  a  deep  horror  of  the  licentious 
and  romantic  literature  of  the  day.  Their  inborn  good 
sense  will  enable  them  to  feel  that  it  is  just  as  dangerous 
and  as  fatal  to  allow  the  mind  to  feed  upon  the  thousand  and 
one  “Dime  Novels,”  “Illustrated  Weeklies,”  and  “Fire¬ 
side”  or  “Seaside  Libraries”  as  it  would  be  on  entering 
forest  or  fields  in  summer  or  autumn  to  eat  of  the  bright- 
colored  berries  of  unknown  kinds,  or  of  the  beautiful 
and  tempting  forms  of  mushroom  that  cover  the  earth  all 
around. 

Let  their  rule  be  to  read  only  what  they  know  to  be  good, 
and  never  to  touch  what  they  know  to  be  bad,  or  what  they 
suspect  is  so.  One  of  the  first  principles  of  morality  is, 
that  all  rational  beings  accountable  tto  God  for  their  actions 
should  be  able  to  assign  a  lawful  motive  for  every  act  of 
theirs.  It  is  no  justification  for  me,  either  in  presence  of  my 
own  reason,  or  before  the  divine  judgment,  that  I  have  the 
power  of  doing  such  or  such  a  thing,  if  I  choose ; — I  must 
further  justify  my  doing  it  by  the  reason  that  it  is  good, 
useful,  and  lawful  to  me  to  do  what  I  am  impelled  to.  If  I 
have  any  fears  as  to  the  act  being  wrong  or  hurtful,  I  am 
bound  to  suspend  my  action  till  I  am  better  informed. 

This  applies  to  the  works  which  in  every  shape  and  at 
the  lowest  prices  are  continually  poured  on  the  book  mar¬ 
ket  to  entice  the  appetite  of  our  boys  and  girls.  Mothers 
cannot  be  too  careful  in  protecting  their  dear  ones  against 
this  impure  deluge,  and  in  cautioning  them,  when  they 
are  grown  up,  against  the  dreadful  effect  of  these  literary 
poisons. 

INSPIRE  THEM  WITH  A  HORROR  OF  INDECENT  PRINTS. 

Just  as  a  conscientious,  God-fearing  girl  would  not  read 
one  page  or  one  line  of  a  book  she  knew  to  be  bad,  even  so 


252 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


must  she  be  taught  to  turn  her  eyes  away  unhesitatingly 
and  instinctively,  from  an  indecent  engraving,  or  painting, 
or  sculpture, — no  matter  where  she  happens  upon  it.  Make 
her  understand  that  this  is  a  matter  of  'high  principle, — a 
matter  between  her  soul  and  the  All-Seeing  ; — so  that  even 
when  alone  she  stumbles  on  such  objects,  she  would  turn 
her  eyes  and  her  whole  mind  away  from  the  object, — as  she 
would  withdraw  her  hand  or  arm  from  the  contact  of  red- 
hot  iron. 

EXCEEDING  CAEE  IN  THE  CHOICE  OF  ENGRAVINGS, 
PAINTINGS,  AND  STATUARY. 

We  Catholics  are  not  to  forget  that  Christian  art, — that 
all  art,  indeed, — during  the  ages  of  faith,  was  exquisitely 
chaste,  modest,  angelic,  and  tending  to  inspire  heavenly 
thoughts  and  feelings, — while  the  introduction  of  the  nude, 
the  fanatical  worship  of  the  old  heathen  forms  of  art,  and 
the  abuse  poured  on  Christian  painters  and  sculptors, — 
dated  from  the  second  dawn  of  Pagan  philosophy  and  lit¬ 
erature  (the  Renaissance  of  the  fifteenth  century).  Italy 
and  France  are  expiating  at  present  their  having  turned 
aside  from  the  sweet  and  lovely  paths  followed  by  their 
Christian  forefathers.  We,  in  the  New  World,  and  at  the 
beginning  of  a  new  era  in  the  world’ s  history,  must  be  care¬ 
ful  not  to  imitate  what  is  most  blameworthy;  we  must  in 
the  culture  of  art  and  literature,  as  in  all  else,  be  guided  by 
the  supernatural  light  within  us. 

Nor  need  we  fear  in  replacing  on  its  pedestal  the  pure 
and  lofty  ideal  of  the  beautiful  worshiped  by  so  many 
Christian  generations,  to  be  accused  of  being  reactionists  or 
retrogrades.  It  is  no  shame  to  any  man,  when  he  has,  know¬ 
ingly  or  not,  gone  astray  from  the  only  royal  road  of  right¬ 
eousness  and  truth,  to  confess  his  error  and  retrace  his  steps. 
It  is  no  shame,  when  one  has  openly  and  consciously  sinned 
and  led  others  astray  as  well, — to  retract  one’s  error  and  re¬ 
pair  it  so  as  to  make  the  reparation  as  public  as  the  offense. 
The  shame  is  in  the  conscious  and  voluntary  wrong-doing ; 


CHOICE  OF  ENGRAVINGS,  PAINTINGS,  AND  STATUARY.  253 

the  very  height  of  shame  is  to  persevere  in  wrong-doing, 
when  one  sees  the  full  ruin  it  brings  on  one’s  self  and  on 
others.  There  can  be  no  shame  in  going  back  to  the  right. 

One  may  admire  the  genius  of  Michael  Angelo  and  Ra¬ 
phael  without  ceasing  to  admire  still  more  the  heavenly 
purity  of  Fra  Angelico  and  Fra  Bartolomeo  and  Bernardo 
Luini,  or  the  chaste  and  exquisite  grace  of  Donatello  and 
Luca  della  Robbia,  and  one  greater  than  all  perhaps,  Lion- 
ardo  da  Vinci.  We  are  only  anxious  that  in  every  orna¬ 
ment  of  the  home,  and  in  every  object  of  art  placed  before 
the  chaste  eyes  of  girlhood  and  youth,  there  should  be  a 
beauty  lifting  the  soul  above  earth  and  reminding  it  of  that 
heavenly  abode  where  all  things  are  made  beautiful  in  the 
light  of  the  Uncreated  Truth.  Children,  with  the  sure  in¬ 
stinct  of  truth  and  beauty  which  is  so  marvelously  quick¬ 
ened  by  the  indwelling  Spirit,  are  not  deceived  by  the 
cheat  you  put  on  them  when  your  statue  of  an  angel  is 
only  that  of  a  coarse,  overgrown  boy,  with  excrescences 
called  wings,  or  when  your  pretended  weeping  Magdalen 
is  but  a  very  unspiritual  and  very  ill-dressed  female.  Their 
unsophisticated  sense  will  make  them  turn  away  from  the 
most 4  ‘  classic  ’  ’  crucifixions  of  the  Renaissance,  to  kneel  be¬ 
fore  the  simple  and  sublime  beauty  of  that  painting  of  the 
Spaniard  Velasquez,  in  which  the  scourged  and  bleeding 
Redeemer  lifts  himself  from  the  ground  on  which  he  has 
fallen  exhausted,  to  look  back  at  a  boy  who  kneels  behind 
him  and  sends  up  a  cry  of  grief  and  adoration.  The  face  of 
the  Divine  Sufferer  is  more  eloquent  than  any  commentary 
ever  written  on  the  Passion,  and  from  his  head  a  single  ray 
of  light  shoots  forth  to  pierce  the  heart  of  the  little  wor¬ 
shiper. 

Is  not  such  the  effect,  O  mothers,  that  you  would  have 
your  dear  ones  experience  from  contemplating  evei:y  book 
and  engraving  and  picture  and  statue  that  you  place  be¬ 
fore  their  eyes  to  help  you  in  your  labor  of  lifting  their 
minds  to  his,  and  of  bringing  down  one  ray  of  light,  one 
spark  of  the  sacred  fire  from  his  heart  into  theirs  ? 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  the  writer  to  discuss  the  com- 


254 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


parative  merits  of  national  schools  of  art,  or,  indeed,  to 
enter  into  any  thing  like  a  formal  judgment  on  artistic  pro¬ 
ductions.  He  is  only  'considering  here  the  effect  which 
works  of  art  produce  on  the  educated  and  pure-minded. 
Without  depreciating  the  productions  of  any  one  school,  or 
the  artists  of  any  one  nation,  he  may  be  allowed  to  say 
that  no  painter  of  any  school  or  nation  seems  to  have  caught 
the  true  spirit  of  Christian  devotion  in  a  higher  degree  than 
the  comparatively  little  known  Velasquez, — the  most  glori¬ 
ous  representative  of  Spanish  art. 

GIRLS  TO  BE  TAUGHT  THE  VALUE  OF  TIME. 

Hot  less  important  to  the  future  welfare  of  your  children 
than  any  thing  you  can  teach  them  is  the  priceless  value 
you  should  accustom  them  to  set  upon  time.  Mothers, — 
wealthy  mothers,  in  particular,  — cannot  weigh  too  seriously 
and  conscientiously  how  strictly  the  just  Judge  will  call 
them  to  account  for  the  use  of  the  hours  and  days  and 
years  which  are  wasted  in  idleness,  even  though  not  mis¬ 
spent  in  vice  and  dissipation.  There  are  some  persons  wdio 
live  as  though  they  never  had  been  taught  when  young 
that  the  Great  Giver  of  life  and  time  and  hourly  oppor¬ 
tunities  would  surely  exact  of  them  one  day  a  minute  ac¬ 
count  of  the  use  made  of  every  sun  that  rose  upon  them, 
and  of  every  hour  that  marks  his  course. 

Mothers  such  as  we  suppose  our  readers  to  be,  cannot 
plead  ignorance  of  their  early  knowledge  of  the  sacred 
obligation  of  employing  every  moment  of  time  to  good 
purpose, — and,  surely,  they  will  not  allow  son  or  daughter 
of  theirs  to  be  ignorant  in  so  vital  a  matter. 

It  is  in  childhood,  and  in  youth  especially,  that  every  day 
is  of  priceless  value,  when,  in  simplest  truth,  every  precious 
hour  well  employed  is  a  seed  sown  in  the  furrow  and  cov¬ 
ered  over  with  the  fostering  earth,  and  blessed  of  God  from 
on  high  to  bring  forth  certain  increase  in  due  season.  But 
every  day  and  hour  idled  away  or  misspent  in  doing  any 
thing  and  every  thing  but  what  one  e™0,1**  ^ 


GIRLS  TO  BE  TAUGHT  THE  VALUE  OF  TIME.  255 


portunity  thrown  away  for  self-improvement,  for  progress 
in  all  true  goodness,  or,  what  is  infinitely  worse,  given  to 
the  service  of  the  archenemy  of  souls  and  of  their  Al¬ 
mighty  Creator. 

We  beseech  women  of  culture  to  read  and  ponder  well 
those  lines  of  a  man  of  the  world,  and  to  read  them  to  hus¬ 
band  and  children, — to  their  young  daughters  above  all. 
The  timely  regrets  which  their  perusal  is  calculated  to 
awaken  may  prevent  eternal  and  unavailing  regret 

“  The  lost  days  of  my  life  until  to-day, 

What  were  they,  could  I  see  them  on  the  street, 

Lie  as  they  fell?  Would  they  be  ears  of  wheat 
Sown  once  for  food  but  trodden  into  clay? 

Or  golden  coins  squandered  and  still  to  pay  ? 

Or  drops  of  blood  dabbling  the  guilty  feet  ? 

Or  such  spilt  water  as  in  dreams  must  cheat 
The  throats  of  men  in  Hell  who  thirst  alway  ? 

I  do  not  see  them  here  ;  but  after  death 
God  knows  I  know  the  faces  I  shall  see. 

Each  one  a  murdered  self,  with  low  last  breath. 

‘  I  am  thyself, — what  hast  thou  done  to  me?’ 

‘  And  I — and  I — thyself  ’  (lo  !  each  one  saith), 

*  And  thou  thyself  to  all  eternity  r  ”  * 

Innocent  girls,  with  their  quick  woman’ s  wit  and  the  un¬ 
erring  instinct  of  pure  hearts,  will  easily  seize  the  poet’s 
pregnant  meaning.  Our  lost  days  are  dead  leaves  strewing 
the  street  along  which  we  daily  travel,  lying  as  they  fell 
and  never  to  bloom  or  live  again.  They  are  “ears  of 
wheat”  given  to  us  to  sow  for  food  of  life  eternal,  and 
which  we  have  not  cast  into  the  furrow,  but  thrown  on  the 
highway  to  be  “  trodden  into  clay.”  They  are  “ golden 
coins”  confided  to  our  husbandry,  with  which  the  Giver 
intended  we  should  purchase  eternity,  and  we  have  squan¬ 
dered  them  against  His  will !  But  they  are  “still  to  pay.” 

.  .  .  And  presently,  when  youth  has  quickly  passed, 

and  old  age  is  before  us, — like  the  dry  bed  of  a  river  out  of 
which  almost  the  last  drop  has  been  drained, — we  would 
fain  go  back  to  drink  of  these  sweet  waters  of  our  life  ; — 


*  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 


256 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


but  they  are  like  “ spilt  water”  thrown  on  the  burning 
soil,  and  cheating  the  ever- thirsting  throats  of  “men  in 
hell.” 

We  must  not  deceive  ourselves :  every  moment  of  time  is 
ourself  living  during  that  brief  space,  every  hour  and  day, 
— is  our  own  soul  tilling  that  hour  and  that  day  with  its 
deeds  of  good  or  ill. 

You  have  heard  of  the  “transit”  or  passage  of  a  star 
across  the  sun’ s  disk :  astronomers  watch  it  with  their  tele¬ 
scopes,  and  count  by  minutes  and  seconds  the  apparition 
of  a  little  black  speck  on  the  bright  round  luminary  while 
it  moves  rapidly  across  it  to  the  opposite  side  to  be  appa¬ 
rently  lost  in  the  unmeasured  heavens  beyond.  The  span  of 
our  life, — as  compared  with  eternity,  is  like  that  bright 
broad  face  of  the  sun  projected  on  the  immensity  of  space 
behind  it ;  and  the  stages  of  our  passage  through  life  are  as 
brief  and  as  rapid  as  the.  transit  of  yonder  planet  across  the 
sun.  At  every  minute  and  second  it  is  “myself”  who  am 
moving  before  the  eye  of  the  all-seeing  and  all-remembering 
God.  I  enter  life  like  one  emerging  from  the  boundless 
void  behind  me,  and  appear  moving,  moving  across  the  nar¬ 
row  circle  of  my  life  during  the  few  fleeting  years  given  me 
to  exist, — and  then  I  pass  out  of  the  sight  of  mortal  man 
into  that  other  limitless  eternity  beyond. 

But  brief  as  is  my  passage  across  the  narrow  sphere  al¬ 
lotted  to  me, — I  can  merit,  while  it  lasts,  to  shine  forever 
“from  eternity  to  eternity,”  or  to  disappear  forever  from 
that  heaven  where  my  glory  might  have  been  commensu¬ 
rate  in  duration  with  that  of  the  sun’s  Creator.  Yes,— to 
God’s  eye, — every  moment  of  my  existence  here  below  is 
“myself  passing  over  the  circle  of  this  life  of  trial,”— it  is 
myself  living  for  God,  or  forgetting  him,  or  working  against 
him,  while  the  resistless  motion  of  the  heavens  hurry  me 
from  my  birth  to  my  death,  from  time  to  eternity,  from  the 
use  or  abuse  of  the  golden  moments  and  days  and  hours  to 
the  terrible,  unavoidable,  and  most  righteous  judgment  of 
the  eternal  God. 

When  “my  time”  is  past,  and  that  judgment  is  at  hand, 


MINUTES  ARE  THE  GOLDEN  SANDS  OF  TIME.  257 


I  shall  look  back  upon  the  misspent  years, — each  year  sliall 
be  myself ,  looking  my  conscience  full  in  the  face, 

“  ‘  I  am  thyself — what  hast  thou  done  with  me  ?  ’ 

‘  And  I — and  I  !  ’  ” 

And  what  I  have  made  myself,  by  actual  deadly  guilt  un¬ 
repented  of,  God  will  adjudge  me  to  remain  unchanged  and 
unchangeable  throughout  all  eternity ! 

W e  have  known  men,  born,  alas,  amid  wealth,  and  nursed 
in  the  lap  of  unlimited  indulgence,  who,  having  grown  up 
in  vice,  without  any  other  god  but  their  animal  appetite, 
and  without  any  apparent  sense  of  responsibility  for  youth 
and  manhood  wasted  in  eating,  drinking,  and  dreaming, — 
would  say  to  their  own  young  children  as  these  reproved 
them  for  their  sloth :  6  ‘  What  sin  am  I  committing  ?  I  am 
doing  no  one  harm  ! 5  ’  Had  they  passed  out  of  life,  as  these 
words  were  uttered,  into  the  hands  of  Him  who  giveth  to 
every  one  according  to  his  way ,  and  according  to  the  fruit 
of  his  devices ,  *  they  would  have  known  what  is  the  ter¬ 
rible  and  -irreparable  guilt  of  a  wasted  life.  - 

MINUTES  A  EE  THE  GOLDEN  SANDS  OF  TIME. 

Elsewhere,  in  your  office  of  mistress  of  the  home,  we 
have  pointed  out  the  necessity  of  order  toward  a  proper 
and  fruitful  economy  of  time  ;  this  love  of  order  you  must 
make  a  second  nature  in  every  one  of  your  dear  ones. 
And,  besides,  you  must  begin  early  to  impress  them  with 
the  priceless  importance  of  having  neither  idle  hours  nor 
idle  moments.  Of  course,  we  count  not  these  hours  as  idle 
or  ill  spent  which  follow  the  day’s  toil,  and  are  devoted  by 
all  in  the  home  of  the  laboring  man,  as  well  as  in  the  man¬ 
sion  of  the  wealthy  or  the  halls  of  the  prince,  to  pure  and 
blessed  family  recreation  and  enjoyment.  If  mothers  and 
fathers,  children,  visitors  and  guests,  would  only  make  it  a 
rule  to  join  heartily  in  these  “fireside  entertainments,” — 
they  would  find  these  sweet  evening  hours  to  be  the  source 


17 


Jeremias  xvii.  10. 


258 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


of  the  purest  domestic  happiness,  the  preservative  of  family 
innocence, — blessed  of  God  and  praised  by  ail  friends  and 
acquaintance. 

What  we  urge  upon  the  attention  of  mothers  is  the  value 
they  should  teach  their  children  to  attach  to  what  the 
French  call  “lost  moments,”  moments  perdus , — the  little 
leisure  moments  or  intervals  that  occur  during  the  daily 
hours  of  labor,  study,  or  occupation.  They ,  too,  ought  to 
be  applied  to  some  special  and  profitable  use. 

Such  moments  in  the  day  are  like  the  grains  of  gold  car¬ 
ried  down  from  the  mountain  in  the  river  streams  and 
mixed  up  with  sand  along  their  shores.  Each  grain  in 
itself  is  of  little  account ;  but  the  miner  knows  its  value, 
and  his  husbandry  teaches  him  how  to  separate  the  grains 
of  the  precious  metal  from  the  dull  valueless  matter  in 
which  it  is  buried, — till  at  the  end  of  his  day’s  toil,  he  has 
amassed  the  beginning  of  a  treasure ;  and  with  the  perse¬ 
vering  industry  which  adds  together  the  gains  of  many 
successive  days,  he  soon  acquires  a  fortune.  Do  not  the 
wise  men  of  the  world  repeat  to  you  daily  that  time  is 
gold?  Assuredly  it  is, — even  for  the  ends  of  the  lower 
earthly  life ;  but  for  ‘the  higher  purposes  of  life,  and,  in 
particular,  for  the  highest  of  all,  is  not  every  second  of 
time  a  grain  of  the  golden  sands  ?  And  are  not  these  sands 
the  u  golden  coins  ”  with  which  we  may  purchase  not  only 
all  intellectual  and  moral  excellence,  but  His  friendship  to 
whom  alone  belongs  eternity  ? 

WHAT  CAN  BE  MADE  OUT  OF  ODD  MOMENTS. 

This  industrious  husbandry  of  time  joined  to  persistence 
and  perseverance  in  carrying  out  any  good  purpose,  is,  in 
itself,  more  than  a  fortune  for  every  son  and  daughter  of 
yours  whom  you  will  teach  and  help  to  acquire  it. 

We  remember  once  traveling  with  a  noble  French  lady 
and  her  husband,  bearing  one  of  the  great  historic  names  of 
his  country, — and  from  the  moment  the  train  left  the  sta¬ 
tion  till  it  arrived  in  Paris,  she  and  her  daughter  never 
ceased  their  knitting, — thus  preparing  sundry  articles  for 


VALUE  OF  PRACTICES  OF  DEVOTION. 


259 


an  orphanage  they  befriended.  Every  “  lost  ”  or  “  odd  mo¬ 
ment”  of  theirs  was  thus  devoted  to  the  poor.  It  is  also 
well  known  how  many  useful  arts,  languages,  and  sciences 
have  been  and  are  daily  acquired  by  turning  to  good  ac¬ 
count  these  otherwise  “lost  moments.”  Indeed  it  is  on 
record  that  some  of  the  most  splendid  monuments  of  which 
letters  and  the  sciences  can  boast  were  begun  and  accom¬ 
plished  during  these  odd  moments,  which  else  would  have 
been  truly  lost  moments. 

One  sort  of  industry  can  be  acquired  by  girls  during  these 
intervals  between  work  and  meals,  or  between  one  set  occu¬ 
pation  and  another, — and  that  is  needle-work,  including,  of 
course,  embroidery.  Needle- work  in  our  day  is  becoming 
rather  a  comparatively  rare  accomplishment ;  machine- work 
tends  to  supersede  the  deft  cunning  which  belonged  to 
the  fingers  of  our  grandmothers.  If  sewing-machines  only 
lightened  the  burden  of  our  poor  seamstresses  and  milli¬ 
ners  !  But  we  know  that  the  hearts  of  our  millionaire  mer¬ 
chants  become  pitiless  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  ma¬ 
chines  they  employ,  and  as  unfeeling  toward  the  wants  and 
hardship  of  the  poor  slaves  who  work  them  as  the  very  steel 
and  iron  which  replace  the  human  hand. 

But  precisely  because  mechanical  operations  tend  in  every 
department  of  industry,  and  in  many  departments  of  art,  to 
take  the  place  of  handicraft,  we  ought  to  cherish  in  all  good 
families  intelligent  skill  in  all  kinds  of  handiwork.  There 
are  many,  very  many  ladies,  the  most  distinguished  by  birth, 
position,  and  accomplishments,  who  can  do  every  thing, 
and  have  taught  their  daughters  to  do  every  thing,  from 
painting,  embroidery,  and  sewing  of  all  descriptions,  to  the 
minutest  details  of  cookery.  Are  they  less  dear  to  their 
households  on  that  account  ?  or  are  they  less  worshiped  by 
husband  and  children?  or  less  respected  by  servants  and 
dependents  ?  Our  readers  can  answer  for  us. 

VALUE  TO  BE  ATTACHED  TO  PRACTICES  OF  DEVOTION. 

If  there  is  a  most  skillful  and  thrifty  husbandry  in  thus 
employing  time,  and  in  acquiring  the  skill  and  habits  which 


260 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


make  one’s  existence  most  useful  to  others  and  most  delight¬ 
ful  to  the  home-circle, — there  is  a  spiritual  husbandry  and 
science  which  are  to-  be  practiced  early  and  late  by  mother 
and  daughters.  Of  the  number  of  what  are  called  “  practices 
of  devotion,”  or  of  their  nature,  this  is  not  the  place  to  treat ; 
it  is  the  province  of  the  enlightened  spiritual  guide  to  direct 
the  individual  soul  in  their  use. 

We,  therefore,  coniine  ourselves  to  saying  that  it  would 
not  be  wise  in  mothers  to  cumber  their  daughters  with  too 
many  of  these  practices.  But  in  these,  as  in  morning  and 
evening  prayers,  the  recitation  of  the  “  Angelus,”  the  prep¬ 
aration  for  the  sacraments,  the  devout  attention  during  the 
divine  offices, — it  is  impossible  to  insist  on  too  much  ear¬ 
nestness,  reverence,  and  fervor. 

Even  the  “  devotions”  which  are  not  performed  general¬ 
ly  in  non-Catholic  countries,  like  the  “  Angelus,”  have  a 
sublime  sense  to  the  Protestant  mind  when  properly  ex¬ 
plained.  For  what  can  be  more  magnificent,  in  Catholic 
lands,  than  the  custom  when  the  Angelus  bell  sounds  at 
dawn,  and  noon,  and  sunset,  to  see  every  man,  woman,  and 
child  stand  still,  every  head  uncovered,  and  every  knee  bent, 
to  worship  the  incarnate  God,  the  author  of  the  Christian 
faith,  the  Second  Parent  of  the  human  race,  and  to  renew 
toward  the  Second  Eve,  the  Mother  of  the  new  life,  Ga¬ 
briel’s  salutation,  “  Hail,  full  of  grace!  the  Lord  is  with 
thee  !  ”  It  is  as  if  the  united  voice  of  Christendom,  and  in 
it  the  voice  of  the  entire  race,  went  up  thrice  each  day  to 
thank  the  incomprehensible  Goodness  who  sent  his  only 
begotten  Son  to  be  the  teacher,  guide,  and  consoler  of  the 
entire  human  family. 

When  the  wise  men  in  the  gospel  had  come  from  the  far 
East  to  Bethlehem,  and  had  been  directed  by  the  star  to 
the  wayside  cave  in  which  the  Mother  and  the  Babe  had 
found  a  refuge,  they — first-fruits  of  heathendom — as  if  in 
the  name  of  us  all,  “ falling  down  adored  Him”  on  his 
Mother’ s  knees.  Is  it  not  what  we  do  still  ?  And  in  this 
great  city  of  ISTew  York,  how  many  of  our  professional  men, 
of  our  hard-worked  business  men,  who  interrupt  every  oc- 


THE  MOTHER'S  GUIDANCE  IN  MATRIMONY. 


261 


cupation  when  noon  is  nigh,  to  lift  heart  and  silent  voice  to 
the  throne  of  that  same  incarnate  God,  and  unite  their 
prayer  with  that  of  the  Church  the  whole  world  over ! 

It  was  the  universal  custom  in  Catholic  countries,  at  the 
sound  of  the  Angelns  or  Ave  Maria  bell, — that  all  labor 
and  all  conversation  should  cease  in  street,  in  field,  on  high¬ 
way,  in  court  and  camp  ; — all  uncovered  to  join  in  the  salu¬ 
tation.  The  great  heart  of  the  busy  world  stood  still  thrice  a 
day,  and  forgot  its  pursuits  and  its  cares,  to  salute  Christ’s 
Mother  and  adore  himself !  Was  it  not  a  sublime  cus¬ 
tom  ?  And  are  those  lands  in  aught  the  better  to-day  that 
so  many  do  not  worship  Christ,  or  pay  daily  reverence  to 
the  true  Mother  of  all  the  Living  ? 

We  were  touched  to  the  heart  last  February,  while  enjoy¬ 
ing  the  hospitality  of  the  Bishop  of  Buffalo,  to  hear  the 
bells  from  the  cathedral  tower  ring  over  the  half-silent  city 
at  night,  and  over  the  adjacent  lake,  calling  on  the  faithful 
to  pray  for  the  souls  of  the  departed.  Is  not  all  this  most 
beautiful  ? 

And  most  beautiful,  instructive,  and  improving  are  all 
these  sweet  immemorial  practices  of  popular  devotion, — the 
sign  of  the  cross,  the  use  of  holy  water,  of  blessed  candles, 
— the  devotion  of  the  rosary,  that  of  the  way  of  the  cross, 
and  the  love  which  the  Church  is  laboring  to  enkindle  and 
spread  on  every  land  toward  that  Heart  which  was  pierced 
for  us  in  death,  and  in  which  our  names  are  written. 

Let  mothers  be  zealous  not  only  in  obtaining  themselves 
full  instruction  on  all  these  points,  but  in  communicating  it 
to  their  sons  and  daughters.  Sons  thus  taught  will  not  be 
apt, — though  going  forth  from  never  so  poor  a  home, — to 
forget  the  early  piety  which  lies  so  deep  in  mind  and  heart, 
or  to  turn  away  from  the  faith  of  their  mothers  ;  and  such 
daughters  will  be  its  true  apostles  everywhere. 

THE  MOTHER’S  GUIDANCE  WITH  RESPECT  TO  MATRIMONY. 

There  are  two  things  which  the  true  mother  will  not  fail 
to  do  in  order  to  save  her  child  from  a  wrong  choice,  and 
from  the  irreparable  misery  it  would  bring. 


262 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


The  first  is  to  accustom  her  to  attach  no  importance  what¬ 
ever  to  a  handsome  face  or  fine  personal  appearance  as  com¬ 
pared  with  the  higher  qualities  of  goodness,  purity  of  life, 
honor,  truthfulness,  temperance,  and  fortitude, — all  of  which 
go  to  make  up  the  one  attribute  of  manliness  in  its  true 
sense  :  add  to  this, — that  which  in  God’s  present  provi¬ 
dence,  constitutes  the  perfection  and  glorious  crowm  of  man¬ 
hood, — enlightened  and  practical  faith, — and  you  will  have 
placed  before  your  daughter’s  mind  the  ideal  husband  to 
whom  alone  a  true  Christian  maiden  could  give  the  worship 
of  her  love. 

Nor  need  you, — nor,  indeed,  ought  you, — to  paint  true 
manliness  to  the  young  girl  with  the  avowed  purpose  of 
describing  the  only  desirable  husband,  or  even  a  husband 
at  all.  Form  her  judgment  by  making  her  prize  the  quali¬ 
ties  that  enter  into  such  a  character,  and  giving  her  a  con¬ 
tempt  of  their  opposites.  That  will  be  sufficient  to  prompt 
to  a  good  choice  when  the  proper  time  has  come,  and  to 
keep  her  back  from  a  wrong  choice.  Of  course,  when  the 
thought  of  matrimony  has  come,  it  will  be  a  no  less  sacred 
duty  for  you  to  pray  yourself  and  to  make  your  child  pray, 
and  seek  in  the  sacraments  new  light  and  strength  never 
refused  to  all  who  ask  for  such  in  this  momentous  crisis  of 
life. 

The  second  is,  without  warning  your  child,  to  keep  away 
from  your  home  all  young  men  who  would  not  be  desirable 
matches,  and  to  invite  or  admit  only  those  who  are,  in  your 
judgment  and  that  of  your  husband,  most  likely  to  be  wor¬ 
thy  companions  for  the  innocent  girl  you  have  reared.  Re¬ 
member  that  you  have  to  consult  your  child’s  happiness 
infinitely  more  than  your  own ;  and  in  selecting  the  man 
whom  you  would  have  for  son  in  your  family,  select  him 
unselfishly, — for  his  own  real  worth  and  his  pure  devotion 
to  your  daughter,  as  well  as  because  of  her  disposition,  her 
heartfelt  love  for  him,  and  the  likelihood  of  their  being 
truly  devoted  to  each  other  through  life. 

If  God  has  blessed  you  with  a  good  husband, — if  your 
mutual  affection  and  your  being  all  in  all  to  each  other, 


VOCATIONS  TO  RELIGIOUS  LIFE. 


263 


have  been,  under  God,  the  source  of  all  your  wedded  bliss, 
and  the  secret,  too,  of  your  prosperity, — then  see  to  it  well 
whether  or  not  the  young  people  whose  union  you  desire 
are  sure  to  be  companions  for  each  other.  If  not,  let  no 
inducement  make  you  encourage  a  friendship  or  an  ac¬ 
quaintance  between  them. 

On  this  point, — every  mother  who  has  both  a  true  woman¬ 
ly  heart  and  the  fear  of  God  before  her  eyes,  will  avoid  with 
the  utmost  care  the  guilt  and  folly  of  so  many  women,  who, 
in  choosing  for  their  daughters,  consult  nothing  but  their 
own  selfish  liking  or  dislike,  their  worldly  interest,  the  tem¬ 
poral  advantages  which  may  accrue  to  themselves  and  the 
other  members  of  their  families, — leaving  entirely  out  of 
the  question  the  inclinations  of  the  poor  girl  herself  or  her 
prospects  of  happiness  or  unhappiness. 

Such  conduct  is  highly  criminal,  and  is  sure  to  bring 
swift  retribution  with  it. 

VOCATIONS  TO  RELIGIOUS  LIFE. 

As  to  those  of  your  daughters  who  feel  called  to  the 
higher,  the  Virginal  Life, — do  not  presume  to  put  obstacles 
in  the  way.  There  are  many  certain  indications  pointing 
out  to  a  pious  and  unselfish  mother’s  eye  that  her  child  is 
called  to  the  divine  service.  There  are  rules  laid  down  by 
God’s  Church,  and  sanctioned  by  the  practice  of  so  many 
centuries, — all  directing  both  the  child  herself  in  the  exam¬ 
ination  of  her  own  heart  and  its  motives,  and  enlightening 
the  priest  and  the  theologian  in  his  appreciation  of  all  the 
reasons  for  and  against  such  a  vocation.  If  both  your  child 
and  yourself  are  guided  by  the  sole  desire  of  doing  God’s 
will,  and  if  you  fervently  pray  him  to  make  that  will 
known,  there  is  little  danger  of  your  going  astray. 

If  the  mother,  in  a  matter  so  weighty  as  this,  really  seeks 
to  find  out  what  God  wills,  and  is  resolved  to  fulfill  it,  and 
not  to  prefer  her  own  to  it, — then  she  will  not  manifest 
anger  toward  her  child,  abuse  her  as  if  she  were  attempting 
to  do  what  is  wrong  and  unlawful,  or  treat  the  priest  who 


264 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


directs  her  as  if  he  were  stealing  away  her  heart’ s  treasure 
unjustifiably  and  unwarrantably. 

You  have  brought  up  your  daughters  to  love  all  that  was 
best  and  holiest,  to  consider  God’ s  will  as  the  supreme  law 
of  angels  and  men,  and  God’s  service  as  the  most  honora¬ 
ble  and  blissful  occupation  of  man  or  angel.  Bless  God 
when  you  have  quietly  and  surely  found  out  that  your 
child  wants  to  give  herself  to  Him  all  the  days  of  her  life : 
take  your  child  yourself  to  the  altar,  as  Anna  of  old  took 
her  first-born,  Samuel, — her  only  one, — and  offer  her  to  Him 
who  will  be  her  portion  forever,  and  reward  your  generosity 
with  untold  blessings. 


II. 

SPECIAL  CAEE  NEEDED  IN  EDUCATING  BOYS. 

While  bestowing  such  constant  care  on  her  girls,  the 
Christian  mother  must  be  mindful  of  the  special  difficulties 
which  attend  the  education  of  boys,  of  the  terrible  struggles 
which  await  men  in  the  battle  of  life,  and  of  the  imperious 
necessity  of  so  arming  their  soul  in  advance  as  to  put  all  the 
chances  of  victory  on  their  side.  Your  boy  is  doomed  to 
battle  with  the  general  corruption,  the  low  thoughts,  the  low 
aims,  the  low  tastes,  and  the  lower  manners  of  the  genera¬ 
tion  among  whom  his  lot  is  cast ;  he  will  have  to  battle  with 
inveterate  and  powerful  prejudices  against  his  faith,  with  a 
current  of  scientific  opinion  gathering  daily  fresh  depth  and 
width,  and  tending  to  sap  the  very  foundations  of  revealed 
religion ;  against  the  influence  of  a  literature  and  a  press 
bitterly  hostile  to  all  that  he  has  been  taught  to  look  up  to 
with  reverence  and  worship  ;  against  a  “ human  respect” 
more  seductive  and  degrading  than  the  witchery  of  the 
fabled  enchantress  of  old,  who  only  held  out  to  thirsting  lips 
a  cup  full  of  all  delights,  and  then  changed  all  who  tasted 
it  into  beasts  and  kept  them  beasts  forever  : — and,  what  is 
worse  than  all,  he  will  have  to  battle  with  his  own  heart  and 
its  inclinations  amid  a  world  solely  occupied  in  ministering  . 


SPECIAL  CAPE  NEEDED  IN  EDUCATING  BOYS.  265 


to  sensuality  and  passion.  God  alone,  with  His  fear  and 
His  love  firmly  seated  in  the  heart,  while  it  is  as  yet  free 
from  sin  and  evil  habits, — will  be  all-powerful  to  give  cour¬ 
age  and  strength  and  perseverance  and  final  triumph  even 
to  the  best  and  bravest  against  such  a  combination  of  ad¬ 
versaries. 

See  how  many  of  the  boys  you  behold  yearly  kneeling  in 
our  churches  for  first  communion  or  confirmation  fail  to  hold 
their  virtue  or  even  their  faith  firmly  till  manhood.  If  your 
eye  could  follow  each  generation  as  it  grows  up,  the  few 
who  remain  steadfast  in  the  piety  or  faith  of  their  youth 
are  like  the  rare  ears  of  corn  on  the  harvest-field  when  the 
sickles  of  the  reapers  have  disappeared  and  the  sheaves 
have  been  housed. 

It  is  of  all  duties  the  most  important  as  well  as  the  most 
difficult  to  ground  your  boys  in  true  piety  and  in  that  true 
Christian  manliness  of  which  piety  is  the  beautiful  crown. 
Think  of  the  heroic  temper  which  the  great  Christian 
soldier  mentioned  in  the  following  passage  must  have  re¬ 
ceived  from  his  mother’s  teaching,  and  consider  well  how 
you  are  to  imitate  her  in  your  training  of  every  boy  of 
yours. 

“  When  the  venerable  Marshal  de  Mouchy  was  led  to  exe¬ 
cution  for  having  protected  priests  and  other  devoted  vic¬ 
tims, — as  they  were  hurrying  him  from  the  Luxembourg, 
a  voice  was  heard  from  the  crowd  saying,  4  Courage,  Mou¬ 
chy  !  Courage,  Mouchy  !  ’  The  hero  turned  to  them  who 
were  by  his  side,  and  said :  ‘  When  I  was  sixteen  years  of 
age,  I  mounted  the  breach  for  my  king  ;  now  that  I  am 
eighty-four,  I  shall  not  want  courage  to  mount  the  scaffold 
for  my  God !  ’  ”  * 

Is  not  your  purpose  to  form  such  true  men  as  this — men 
so  filled  with  the  sense  of  duty  that  at  sixteen  they  would 
be  ready  to  brave  death  at  the  call  of  country,  and  in  ex¬ 
treme  old  age  brave  the  rage  of  an  impious  crowd  and  the 


*  Mazas,  Vies  des  grands  Capitaines  Fran^ais  du  Moyen  Age ,  tome  iii.,  p.  220 
—as  quoted  by  Digby  in  his  “  Broad  Stone  of  Honor.” 


266 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


horrors  of  a  public  execution  to  maintain  the  faith  of  their 
boyhood?  Yes, — here  is  the  model  man  :  one  who  has  been 
taught  and  is  accustomed  from  infancy  to  fear  God  alone, 
to  serve  him  in  the  performance  of  every  civil  and  every 
religious  duty,  ready  at  any  moment,  from  boyhood  to  the 
feeblest  old  age,  to  discharge  conscientious  duty  fearless  of 
every  consequence.  Whoso  is  true  to  God  all  through  life 
cannot  fail  to  be  true  to  country  and  every  trust  imposed 
on  him. 

We  have  said  above  (pages  249,  250),  that  the  life  of  every 
Christian  man  must  be  an  intellectual  and  moral  warfare 
against  error  and  infidelity.  There  are  countries,  too, — • 
Russia,  Germany,  Italy,  Switzerland,  and  France, — where 
persecution  is  abroad  and  likely  not  to  end  with  the  present 
century, — and  where,  consequently,  Catholic  men  must  go 
forth  from  their  mothers’  homes  filled  with  the  spirit  of  the 
ancient  martyrs  and  the  more  recent  crusaders.  Will  you, 
mothers,  who  read  this,  prepare  your  sons  for  the  strife,  and 
fill  them  with  the  glorious  spirit  which  shone  in  the  Seven 
Macchabee  Martyrs,*  or  that  which  St.  Symphorosa  poured 
into  her  seven  boys  ?  f 

THE  SPIRIT  OF  CHRISTIAN  CHIVALRY. 

“To  be  always  ready  was  the  maxim  of  chivalry,  which 
would  accord  well  with  its  religious  duties.  This  was  also 
the  principle  of  the  saints,  whose  death,  precious  in  the 
sight  of  God,  is  often  observed  to  be  premature  and  sudden. 
Some  have  accomplished  their  course  at  twenty,  others  at  six¬ 
teen,  others  at  a  still  earlier  age.  One  is  preaching  on  the  love 
of  God,  falls  into  an  ecstasy  and  sinks  to  the  ground  ;  on 
being  raised  up,  he  is  found  to  be  dead  :  such  an  instance 
lately  happened  in  the  cathedral  of  Rennes.  Another  dies 
in  the  act  of  blessing  the  people,  with  the  monstrance 
in  his  hands  ;  another  while  beginning  to  say  Mass,  with  the 
words  Introibo  ad  altare  Dei.  He  thought  he  was  about 

*  See  ”  Heroic  Women  of  tlie  Bible  and  the  Church,”  ch.  xix. 

f  “  Lives  of  the  Saints,”  July  18. 


THE  IDEAL  OF  TRUE  MANHOOD. 


267 


to  mount  to  the  material  altar,  but  it  was  to  that  which  is 

in  heaven.  The  Duke  cle  Montmorenci,  in  1827,  died  in  the 

act  of  kissing  the  Cross  on  Good  Friday,  in  the  church  of 

St.  Thomas  d’Aquin  in  Paris.  To  be  attentive  and  prompt 

to  answer  the  call  of  duty  was  another  quality  essential  to 

chivalry  ;  and  what  advantage  might  not  be  expected  from 

such  a  disposition  in  regard  to  religion  ?  Amanti  sat  est 

indicare  (‘  A  sign  is  enough  for  one  who  loveth  truly’). 

Behold  the  character  of  chivalry  :  it  knows  not  the  word 

£  to-morrow,’  as  St.  Augustin  says  of  a  Christian.”  * 

And  do  not  fancy  that  this  glorious  spirit  is  dead.  Thank 

God  it  still  fires  the  breasts  of  millions.  “  Take  a  recent  in- 

« 

stance.  At  the  first  assault  by  the  French,  when  Pome  was 
in  the  hands  of  the  new  Pagans,  the  aide-de-camp  of  the 
general  Levaillant  fell  mortally  wounded.  After  confessing 
to  the  Abbe  du  Cosquer,  the  general  came  to  see  him.  ‘  Do 
you  suffer  much,  commander  ?  ’  he  demanded.  ‘ Beaucoup , 
mon  general ,’  he  replied  with  simplicity,  ‘  mats  pas  encore 
assez  pour  Dieu  ’  (‘  Much,  general ;  but  not  enough  yet  for 
God  ’).  The  general  fell  on  his  knees  and  wept.”  f 

THE  IDEAL  OF  TKTJE  MANHOOD. 

There  was,  at  the  most  hopeless  period  of  the  history  of 
Christendom,  and  when  the  deluge  of  Barbarism  seemed 
to  have  utterly  swept  away  with  the  Pom  an  empire  the 
first  growth  of  Christian  civilization,  a  man  who  went  forth 
from  Ireland  at  the  head  of  a  band  of  missionaries,  and 
undertook  to  begin  anew  the  labor  of  reviving  throughout 
all  Western  Europe  the  love  of  religion,  piety,  letters,  and 
gentleness.  France,  Germany,  Switzerland,  and  Italy  have 
never  ceased  to  treasure  the  remembrance  of  his  glorious 
services.  It  was  an  age  of  violence,  lawlessness,  lust,  and 
blood  ;  and  Columbanus  set  himself  with  his  companions  to 
raise  high,  high,  and  ever  higher  still,  the  level  of  divine 
love  and  supernatural  excellence  in  their  own  hearts  and 

*  Digby,  “  Broad  Stone  of  Honor,”  vol.  i.,  pp.  106,  107. 

\  Idem,  Compitum,  b.  iv.,  c.  ii.,  pp.  106,  107. 

‘  • 


268 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


lives, — that  they  might  thereby  be  enabled  to  raise  the  level 
of  all  goodness  and  excellence  in  the  dark,  warring,  sensual 
mass  of  humanity  around  them.  And  thus  these  model 
men,  the  apostles  of  their  age,  passed  through  Gaul  and 
Northern  Germany  and  Italy  like  a  vision  of  supernatural 
beings  exalted  between  heaven  and  earth,  compelling  men 
to  look  up  and  admire  and  envy  such  unearthly  goodness, — 
drawing  after  them — as  the  vision  passed  to  and  fro — the 
hearts  of  the  multitude  and  crowds  of  imitators,  and  there¬ 
by  renewing  slowly  but  surely  the  face  of  the  earth. 

Swarms  of  devoted  disciples  were  left  behind  by  the  great 
Irish  patriarch,  in  numerous  monasteries  and  monastic 
schools, — which  became  in  the  surrounding  districts  centers 
of  a  new  spiritual  and  intellectual  renovation,  till  the  earth 
began  to  rest  once  more  from  the  convulsions  and  wars  of 
centuries, — and  God’s  work  through  his  Church  began  to 
prosper  anew  in  peace  and  beauty  and  holiness  of  life. 

It  was  an  age  of  ruthless  warfare  and  lawless  violence, 
we  have  said;  and  these  men  had  schooled  themselves 
under  their  heroic  leader  to  the  use  of  weapons  and  meth¬ 
ods  which  might  beat  down  the  lance  of  the  robber  and 
break  the  bloody  sword  of  brutal  power. 

Would  you  know  what  was  the  ideal  Columbanus  set 
before  himself,  before  those  who  gave  themselves  with  him 
to  a  life  of  apostolic  abnegation  and  labor,  and  to  all  who 
studied  in  their  schools  or  sought  to  walk  in  the  paths  of 
Christian  manhood  under  their  direction?  Here  it  is  in 
brief.  The  Christian  youth  and  man  of  that  age — so  much 
like  our  own  in  the  deluge  which  sweeps  over  Christendom 
— should  be : 

‘  ‘  Fearless  in  the  cause  of  Truth,  but  shrinking  timidly 
from  worldly  contentions  ; — before  the  Divine  Goodness  like 
a  beggar  seeking  alms,  in  presence  of  the  wicked  like  a  sol¬ 
dier  unconquered  ; — docile  as  a  babe  toward  his  -  elders  and 
superiors,  running  in  the  race  of  virtue  with  the  ardor  of  a 
giant  along  with  one’ s  juniors  ; — loving  to  be  all  in  all  to  his 
equals,  but  straining  every  nerve  to  rise  up  to  the  level  of 
the  Perfect ;  meanwhile  never  envying  the  excellence  of 


FEARLESS  IN’  THE  CAUSE  OF  TRUTH. 


2G9 


those  above  him,  nor  showing  jealousy  of  the  swifter  in  the 
race,  nor  speaking  ill  of  those  who  had  kept  him  back  ;  but 
responding  promptly  and  generously  to  the  voice  of  those 
who  called  on  him  to  advance.”  * 

Here,  then,  0  mothers,  we  place  in  your  hand  a  mirror  in 
which  you  can  view  at  a  glance  all  the  chief  characters  of 
that  true  manhood  on  which  you  have  to  form  your  boys. 
Let  each  one  of  you  call  your  son  to  look  into  this  mirror 
with  you, — so  that  he  may  become  enamored  of  the  divine 
likeness  pictured  therein.  And  let  us  take  every  one  of 
these  lineaments  separately,  and  study  it  well, — just  as 
some  painters  do  before  copying  a  great  master-piece,  divid¬ 
ing  the  whole  surface  into  small  squares,  so  that  they  may 
be  sure  to  reproduce  exactly  every  feature  and  line. 

FEARLESS  IIS'  THE  CAUSE  OF  TRUTH. 

On  this  leading  feature  of  Christian  manhood,  we  need 
not  dwell  at  much  length :  what  has  been  already  said  about 
the  spirit  of  faith,  and  a  life  of  faith,  supposes  that  youi 
boy  has  not  only  been  thoroughly  instructed  in  all  that 
pertains  to  his  religion,  but  that  you  have  labored  to  in¬ 
spire  him  with  an  enthusiastic  love  of  it,  and  a  chivalrous 
zeal  in  its  defense. 

This  chivalrous  zeal  is,  however,  the  very  point  on  which 
we  would  have  you  dwell  for  a  few  moments.  The  forms 
of  ancient  knighthood,  as  blessed  by  the  Church  in  the  ages 
of  faith,  have  passed  away  ;  but  the  spirit  of  chivalry  has 
not  and  never  will  so  long  as  the  faith  of  Christ  is  a  living 
reality  on  earth.  Hear,  then,  what  is  meant  by  that  spirit, 
what  virtues  it  supposes  in  the  man  who  lives  up  to  it,  and 
what  are  its  high  practical  obligations.  We  take  the  lesson 
from  authentic  history. 


*  Audax  in  causa  veritatis,  timidus  in  contentionibus,  supplex  bonis,  insup&r . 
dbilis  malis ,  senioribus  obediens,  junioribus  concurrens,  cocnqualibus  cocuquans, 
perfectis  concertans  melioribus  non  invideus,  prcecurrentibus  non  dolens,  remoraiv 
tibus  non  detr aliens,  provocantibus  consentiens. — Bibliotheca  Patrum,  xii..  In 
struct,  xiv. 


270 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


We  are  in  1257,  at  Cologne,  and  assisting  at  a  solemn  cer¬ 
emony,  the  knighting  by  a  papal  legate  of  a  young  prince, 
elected  king  of  the  Romans,  and  soon  to  be  crowned  as  em¬ 
peror  of  Germany.  Mass  has  been  celebrated,  and  William, 
Count  of  Holland,  who  has  only  reached  the  preparatory 
degree  of  squire,  is  presented  to  the  legate  in  these  words  : 
“We  place  before  you  this  squire,  humbly  beseeching  that 
in  your  fatherly  kindness  you  would  accept  his  desires  that 
he  may  become  worthy  of  associating  among  knights.” 

To  which  the  cardinal-legate  replies,  addressing  himself 
to  the  young  prince  :  ‘  ‘  What  is  a  knight  according  to  the 
meaning  of  the  word  %  Whoso  desireth  to  obtain  knight¬ 
hood  must  be  high-minded,  open-hearted,  generous,  supe¬ 
rior,  and  firm  ; — high-minded  in  adversity,  open-hearted  in 
his  connections,  generous  in  honor,  superior  in  courtesy, 
and  firm  in  manly  honesty.  But  before  you  make  your  vow, 
take  this  yoke  of  the  order  which  you  desire  into  mature 
consideration. 

“  These  are  the  rules  of  chivalry:  1st.  Before  all,  with 
pious  remembrance,  every  day  to  hear  the  mass  of  God’s 
passion.  2d.  To  risk  body  and  life  boldly  for  the  Catholic 
faith.  Bd.  To  protect  holy  Church,  with  her  servants,  from 
every  one  who  will  attack  her.  4th.  To  search  out  widows 
and  helpless  orphans  in  their  necessity.  5th.  To  avoid  en¬ 
gaging  in  unjust  wars.  6th.  To  refuse  unreasonable  (exces¬ 
sive)  rewards.  7th.  To  fight  for  the  vindication  of  inno¬ 
cence.  8th.  To  pursue  warlike  exercises  only  for  the  sake 
of  perfecting  warlike  skill.  9th.  To  obey  the  Roman  em¬ 
peror,  or  his  deputy,  with  reverence  in  all  temporal  matters. 
10th.  To  hold  inviolable  the  public  good.  11th.  In  no  way 
to  alienate  the  feudal  tenures  of  the  empire.  12th.  And 
without  reproach  before  God  or  man,  to  live  in  the  world. 

u  When  you  shall  have  faithfully  attended  to  these  laws 
of  chivalry,  know  that  you  shall  obtain  temporal  honor  on 
earth,  and,  this  life  ended,  eternal  happiness  in  heaven.” 

When  the  solemn  oath  on  the  Gospels  had  been  taken, 
the  rank  of  knighthood  was  conferred  on  the  kneeling  sup¬ 
pliant  in  these  words : 


THE  CHIVALROUS  SPIRIT  NEEDED  IN  OUR  DAT.  271 

“For  the  honor  of  God  Almighty  I  make  yon  a  knight, 
and  do  you  take  the  obligation.  But  remember  how  He 
was  smitten  in  the  presence  of  the  high-priest  Annas,  how 
he  was  mocked  by  Pilate  the  governor,  how  he  was  beaten 
with  scourges,  crowned  with  thorns,  and,  arrayed  in  royal 
robe,  was  derided  before  King  Herod,-  and  how  he,  naked 
before  all  the  people,  was  hanged  upon  the  cross.  I  counsel 
you  to  think  upon  his  reproach,  and  I  exhort  you  to  take 
upon  you  his  cross.” 

THE  CHIVALROUS  SPIRIT  MOST  HEEDED  IN  OUR  DAY. 

Most  instructive  and  consoling  are  these  monumental 
teachings  of  the  past.  They  show  how  our  ancestors  con¬ 
sidered  our  dear  Lord  as  the  model  of  all  manly  generosi¬ 
ty,  devotion,  and  self-sacrifice.  Looking  over  these  rules, — 
and  substituting  for  the  words  “  Homan  emperor  or  his 
deputy,”  those  of  “lawful  supreme  authorities,”  and  for 
“ feudal  tenures  of  the  empire,”  the  expression  “national 
territory,” — we  have  a  complete  code  of  religious  patriotism 
adapted  to  the  sore  needs  of  our  own  epoch,  and  most  ac¬ 
ceptable  to  every  young  man  in  love  with  the  interests  of 
religion,  country,  justice,  and  humanity. 

We  cannot  trust  ourselves  to  dwell  at  length  on  so  rich 
and  tempting  a  topic.  Many  occasions  will  offer  themselves 
before  the  end  of  this  book  for  recalling  now  one  rule  and 
now  another. 

But  no  one  can  give  a  more  eloquent  and  satisfactory 
illustration  of  this  first  point  of  his  own  legislation  than 
Columbanus  himself, — the  fearless,  the  heroic,  the  invincible 
amid  persecutions  which  compelled  him  to  go  from  province 
to  province,  and  kingdom  to  kingdom.  When  driven  from 
Burgundy  by  Queen  Brunehild,  and  forced  apparently  to 
renounce  forever  the  apostleship  in  the  countries  which  he 
had  so  immensely  benefited,  he  writes  to  one  of  his  disciples 
whom  he  had  appointed  to  govern  his  monasteries  during 
this  enforced  exile : 

“  I  had  intended  at  first  to  write  you  a  sad  and  tearful 


272 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


letter ;  but,  knowing  tlie  weight  of  labor  and  anxiety  that 
oppresses  you,  I  have  changed  my  style  and  sought  to  dry 
up  your  tears  rather  than  bid  them  flow.  I  have  allowed 
nothing  but  sweetness  to  appear  in  my  words,  and  have 
locked  uj)  my  grief  in  the  bottom  of  my  heart. 

“  But  lo  !  my  own  tears  break  forth  !  .  .  .  They  must 

be  driven  back,  however ;  for  a  good  soldier  may  not  weep 
when  just  about  to  combat.  After  all,  our  misfortune  is  not 
a  new  one.  Is  not  our  fate  what  we  so  often  preached  to 
others  to  be  continually  prepared  for  \  Was  there  not  once 
a  philosopher,  excelling  all  others  in  wisdom,  who  was  cast 
into  prison  for  having  maintained,  in  opposition  to  the  pop¬ 
ular  belief,  that  there  is  but  one  God  ? 

“  Besides,  the  gospel  is  full  of  such  encouragements  as  we 
need.  And,  truly,  one  might  think  that  they  were  chiefly 
written  to  exhort  the  true  disciples  of  Christ  crucified  to 
follow  their  Master  bearing  each  his  own  cross.  Our  dan¬ 
gers  are  many  ;  the  war  which  threatens  us  is  raging  fierce¬ 
ly,  and  our  enemy  is  in  every  way  formidable.  But  there 
is  glory  to  be  gained  by  the  struggle.  .  .  . 

4  i  Take  away  the  enemy,  and  there  is  no  struggle ;  and 
where  there  is  no  struggle  there  is  no  crown.  .  .  .  Where 
one  has  to  struggle,  there  one  finds  courage,  watchfulness, 
earnestness,  patience,  fidelity,  wisdom,  firmness,  and  pru¬ 
dence.  In  the  absence  of  this  warfare  there  is  but  unhap¬ 
piness  and  disaster. 

‘  ‘  So,  then,  no  struggle,  no  crown  !  And  I  add  :  no  liber¬ 
ty,  no  worth  or  dignity  ! ”  * 

The  old  man  had  been  sent  down  the  river  Loire  under 
escort  to  Nantes,  in  order  to  be  thence  sent  on  a  ship  to 
Ireland.  While  there,  and  waiting  for  the  craft  that  was 
to  bear  him  to  his  native  country,  he  poured  out  his  soul  in 

*  Translated  from  Montalembert’s  Moines  d’ Occident ,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  507,  508. 
We  add  the  last  lines  of  the  Latin  text  in  favor  of  our  young  classical  scholars. 
Ei  tollis  hostem,  tollis  et  pugnam.  Si  tollis  pugnam,  tollis  et  coronam.  .  .  . 

Si  tollis  libertatem,  tollis  dignitatem.  .  .  .  Nunc  mild  scribenti  nuntius  su¬ 

per  venit,  narrans  mild  navem  parari.  Amor  non  tenet  ordinem ;  inde  missa 
confusa  est.  Totum  dicere  volui  in  brevi.  Totum  non  potui.  .  .  .  Orate 

pro  me,  viscera  mea,  ut  Deo  vivam. 


REMAINING  TRAITS  OF  TRUE  MANHOOD. 


273 


exhortations  and  directions  to  his  disciples  in  Gaul.  His 
unbending  firmness  and  fearlessness, — which  recall  so  vivid¬ 
ly  the  Prophet  Elias, — were  united  to  a  tenderness  of  heart, 
which  remind  one  of  a  mother’ s  love  for  the  dear  ones  she 
is  leaving  behind. 

“While  I  am  writing  these  words” — the  glorious  old 
champion  of  Christian  truth  and  morality  says,  in  conclu¬ 
sion — “  some  one  comes  in  to  say  that  they  are  getting  my 
vessel  ready,  the  vessel  that  is  to  bear  me  toward  my  own 
country.  The  end  of  the  parchment  also  forces  me  to  make 
an  end  of  writing.  Love  ignores  logical  order,  and  that  is 
what  makes  this  letter  so  confused.  I  wished  to  say  every 
thing  in  brief,  but  in  vain.  .  .  .  Pray  for  me,  dear 

hearts,  that  I  may  live  for  God  alone !  ’  ’ 

God,  for  whom  alone  he  lived  and  labored,  interposed 
miraculously,  and  the  vessel  was  driven  back  by  the  waves 
and  stranded  on  the  beach, — while  the  apostle  and  his  com¬ 
panions  were  sent  to  another  of  the  Frankish  kingdoms  to 
continue  their  work  of  regeneration. 

But  from  that  classic  beach  at  the  mouth  of  the  Loire 
does  not  that  voice  of  power  come  to  us  across  the  deep, 
across  the  wide  gulf  of  twelve  centuries, — to  repeat  to  every 
Christian  mother,  and  to  every  son  she  rears,  the  thrilling 
wxxrds :  “Be  the  soldier  of  Truth.  .  .  .  Our  dangers 

are  many  ;  our  enemy  is  formidable  ;  and  the  war  in  which 
we  must  share  is  raging  fiercely.  But  the  field  of  battle  is 
the  field  of  glory.  No  struggle,  no  crown  !  No  liberty,  no 
honor  or  dignity  !  ” 

SUMMARY  OF  TIIE  REMAINING  TRAITS  OF  TRUE  MANHOOD 

FROM  ST.  COLUMBANUS. 

This  fearless  advocacy  of  truth  and  justice  and  enlight¬ 
ened  liberty, — is  to  be  inseparable  from  an  aversion  for 
loud  wrangling,  for  mere  worldly  contentions,  and  the  mis¬ 
erable  squabbles  for  political  place  and  power,  which  seem 
to  fill  up  the  existence  of  so  many  men  in  our  midst.  The 
fearlessness  and  chivalric  spirit  which  dispose  a  noble- 
18 


274 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


minded  young  man  to  assert  the  truth  which  he  holds  most 
dear  when  he  sees  it  attacked,  and  when  its  advocacy  is 
both  timely  and  needful, — are  not  incompatible  with  gentle¬ 
ness  ;  on  the  contrary,  to  render  that  advocacy  efficacious, 
one  should  be  as  gentle  and  firm  as  fearlessly  outspoken. 

Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  the  hero  of  the  first  crusade,  the 
conqueror  and  first  Christian  king  of  Jerusalem,  is  thus  de¬ 
scribed  by  Radulphus,  his  contemporary:  “He  was  rich 
in  virtues, — in  those  that  become  the  man  of  the  world  as 
well  as  those  that  adorn  the  man  of  God, — bountiful  to  the 
poor,  merciful  to  the  erring ;  distinguished  by  humility, 
humanity,  soberness,  justice,  chastity.  You  would  have 
thought  him  rather  the  light  of  monks  than  the  com¬ 
mander  of  warriors.”  The  Archbishop,  William  of  Tyre, 
says  of  him,  that  he  was  ‘  4  a  religious  man,  clement,  pious, 
and  fearing  God ;  of  spotless  life,  departing  from  all  evil ; 
grave,  firm  to  his  promises,  .  .  .  assiduous  in  prayer 

and  works  of  piety ;  remarkable  for  liberality,  gracious 
and  affable,  kind  and  merciful ;  in  all  his  ways  commenda¬ 
ble  and  pleasing  to  God.”  This  was  the  gentle,  humble 
prince,  who  refused  to  w^ear  a  royal  crown  in  Jerusalem, 
where  Christ  our  king  had  been  crowned  with  thorns. 

And  this  beautiful  union  of  intrepidity  in  presence  of  the 
enemies  of  God  and  of  his  truth,  and  of  gentleness  and 
meekness,  it  is  which  renders  all  these  great  heroic  charac¬ 
ters  so  lovely. 

This  is  what  you  must  impress  on  the  young  souls  you 
are  forming — to  be  as  brave  as  a  lion  when  truth  or  justice 
demands  it,  and  as  meek  and  gentle  as  a  babe  in  the  bosom 
of  one’ s  family  and  the  common  intercourse  of  life. 

The  other  virtues  and  qualities  commended  by  Colum- 
banus  to  his  disciples  are  no  less  necessary  to  every  young 
man  of  our  age  and  country ; — the  dependence  on  God 
which  makes  one  look  up  to  him  with  humble  and  prayer¬ 
ful  gratitude  in  prosperity,  and  the  invincible  fortitude 
which  no  adversity  or  persecution  can  cast  down  ( supplex 
bonis ,  insujperabilis  malls')  ; — the  prompt  disposition  to 
yield  respect  and  deference  to  one’ s  seniors,  obedience  to 


LET  TOUR  SONS  BE  THEIR  SISTERS  SERVANTS.  275 


one’s  superiors,  will  be  joined  to  the  willingness  to  vie' 
with  those  younger  than  one’s  self  in  all  manner  of  good 
deeds ;  the  spirit  of  true  humility  will  never  shrink  from 
feeling  one’s  self  on  an  equality  with  all  who  are  earnest  in 
serving  the  good  cause,  no  matter  what  may  be  one’ s  wealth 
or  one’s  rank.  The  youth  in  whose  heart  burns  the  love  of 
true  excellence  will  ever  seek  out  men  who  are  the  most 
perfect  models,  and  bend  his  whole  strength  to  rise  to  their 
level.  Nor  will  he  be  envious  of  the  superior  talents  or 
acquirements  of  others,  or  jealous  of  such  as  have  attained 
eminence,  or  even  speak  ill  of  those  who  have  been  the 
cause  or  the  occasion  of  his  own  backwardness  in  virtue, 
learning,  or  position  ;  but,  anxious  as  he  is  to  serve  God 
and  his  country  well,  he  will  excite  himself  by  the  exam¬ 
ples  of  those  above  and  before  him  to  make  a  good  use  of 
his  own  talents  and  opportunities, — showing  himself  in  all 
things  ready  to  profit  zealously  and  gratefully  by  the  advice 
and  assistance  of  those  who  take  an  interest  in  his  advance¬ 
ment  ( provocantibus  consentiens). 

This  is  only  one  way  of  interpreting  the  pregnant  synopsis 
of  the  great  monastic  teacher.  A  mother  who  will  weigh 
each  word  well  cannot  fail  to  find  much  more.  We  have 
only  ‘  ‘  oj^ened  the  rich  vein  ’  ’  for  her  and  her  pupils  ;  their 
own  labor  will  discover  its  full  wealth  of  instruction. 

In  the  rules  laid  down  for  knighthood  will  be  remarked  the 
fourth  and  seventh, — the  former  binding  the  true  Christian 
man  “  to  search  out  widows  and  helpless  orphans  in  their 
necessity,” — the  latter  obliging  him  to  be  the  protector  and 
avenger  of  innocence,  of  female  innocence  and  virtue  partic¬ 
ularly.  And  this  leads  us  to  a  most  important  consideration. 

LET  YOUR  SONS  BE  THEIR  SISTERS’  DEVOTED  SERVANTS. 

We  cannot  impress  too  earnestly  this  lesson  upon  you, 
— whether  you  be  the  poor  toiler  in  the  cottage,  or  the 
wealthy  mistress  of  a  palace.  Be  such  in  your  life,  in  your 
whole  deportment,  that  your  sons  may  believe  that  there 
does  not  exist  on  earth  a  mother  or  a  woman  like  you.  Let 
them  be  made  to  understand,  as  early  as  possible,  that  men 


276 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


are  to  treat  all  women  with  a  sovereign  respect.  We  once 
saw  in  one  of  the  public  conveyances  of  Paris  a  young  no¬ 
bleman,  a  foremost  member  of  the  Society  of  St.  Vincent  de 
Paul,  get  out  of  his  place  to  help  a  poor  infirm  old  market- 
woman  into  the  omnibus.  She  was  cumbered  with  a  large 
parcel,  which  he  took  from  her,  raising  his  hat  to  her  as  if 
she  were  a  duchess,  and  then  gracefully  and  gently  helping 
her  to  a  seat.  As  we  passed  the  market  in  which  she 
worked,  he  got  out  before  her,  holding  her  parcel  with  one 
hand  and  giving  her  the  other  to  assist  her  to  alight ;  and 
then,  taking  off  his  hat,  he  kissed  her  hand  to  the  no  small 
astonishment  of  more  than  one  of  the  passengers.  She  was 
only  one  of  the  many  that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  visiting 
weekly  to  distribute  alms  and  spiritual  comfort  in  the  name 
of  the  Society.  We  did  not  venture  to  question  this  noble 
Christian  youth  about  this  demonstration  of  reverence  to 
one  beneath  him.  But  a  friend  who  knew  him  well  said 
that  he  had  been  taught  to  reverence  his  own  mother  in 
every  person  of  her  sex,  in  the  aged  particularly,  and  to 
that  he  added  the  veneration  which  Christian  piety  inspires 
for  all  who  are  the  recipients  of  our  charity. 

In  such  Christian  families  as  his  the  familiarity  which  ex¬ 
ists  between  brother  and  sisters  is  always  accompanied  with 
that  feeling  of  profound  respect  for  the  weaker  sex,  of  that 
invariable  deference  and  courtesy  which  will  keep  a  well- 
bred  brother  always  on  the  watch  to  help  or  serve  his 
sister  in  every  thing, — even  though  no  stranger  or  any 
other  member  of  the  family  happen  to  be  present.  He  is 
taught  to  be  devoted  to  his  sisters  wherever  they  are,  at 
home  or  abroad.  And  one  who  has  that  true  reverential 
feeling  toward  his  mother  and  sisters,  cannot  help  extend¬ 
ing  it  to  every  member  of  their  sex  as  long  as  he  lives.  Is 
there  nothing  here  that  appeals  to  your  motherly  sense  of 
self-respect  % 

THE  NECESSITY  AND  VALUE  OF  HOME-BRED  COURTESY. 

Home  is,  after  all,  the  great  school  of  virtue,  of  faith  and 
piety,  as  well  as  of  that  gentleness  and  devotion  to  the  com- 


THE  VALUE  OF  HOME-BRED  COURTESY. 


277 


fort  of  others,  which  constitute  the  soul  of  courtesy.  It 
was  because  the  lower  classes  of  old  Catholic  countries  were 
so  full  of  deep  faith  and  sincere  piety,  that  they  displayed 
before  the  woful  changes  wrought  by  revolutionism  such  mu¬ 
tual  respect,  such  gentleness,  such  inborn  courtesy.  “God 
bless  your  work  !  ”  was  the  salutation  which  every  stranger 
or  wayfarer  passing  along  the  road  addressed  to  the  laborer 
at  his  work.  And  “  God  bless  you  kindly  !  ”  was  the  gen¬ 
tle  response,  as  the  plowman  looked  away  from  his  fur¬ 
row,  or  the  mason  looked  down  from  the  wall  he  was 
rearing,  or  “God  speed  you  safely!”  was  the  answering 
prayer.  No  matter  how  poor  the  cottage,  or  how  comfort¬ 
able,  —  no  one  crossed  the  ever-open  door  without  the 
greeting,  “  God  save  all  here !  ”  and  without  hearing  in 
return,  “God  save  you  kindly  !”  and  “You  are  heartily 
welcome  ! 5  ’  These  forms  of  greeting  are  but  straws  on  the 
surface  of  popular  life  and  manners ;  but  surely  they  in¬ 
dicated  the  direction  in  which  the  current  ran,  and  were 
significant  of  a  warm  deep  feeling  of  faith  and  neighborly 
charity. 

Are  we  in  aught  the  better  for  dropping  these  and  so 
many  other  salutations  and  locutions  from  our  vocabulary  ? 
Is  our  life  in  aught  the  happier,  the  more  elevated  or  re¬ 
fined,  because  these  currents  are  frozen  or  stand  still?  or 
because  “freer,  easier,  more  independent  and  careless  man¬ 
ners”  usurp  the  place  of  the  sweet  customs  of  Catholic 
ages  ?  In  the  harvest-fields  of  Spain  and  Portugal,  the 
laborers  will  salute  each  other  with  words  of  praise  and 
adoration  in  honor  of  the  Holy  Name,  or  in  honor  of  the  Im¬ 
maculate  Mother.  And  in  conterminous  fields  one  man  or 
woman  will  take  up  the  first  verse  of  a  well-known  hymn, 
or  of  one  of  the  glorious  national  ballads,  and  all  the  others 
will  sing  the  next,  and  so  on  to  the  end,  mixing  religion 
with  the  popular  songs  which  preserve  the  memory  of  the 
heroic  achievements  of  their  ancestors.  Who  does  not  see 
that  such  customs  presuppose  the  highest  civilization  in  the 
masses,  and  the  very  essence  of  that  courtesy  which  can  be 
and  is  high-bred  in  the  peasant  and  the  cottier,  because  bred 


278 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


by  faith  and  piety  and  the  love  of  all  that  is  ennobling  in 
the  memories  of  the  past  ? 

Home-bred  courtesy  is  necessary  from  husband  to  wife 
and  from  wife  to  husband,  from  brother  to  sisters,  and  from 
sisters  to  brothers,  else  in  what  does  the  home  of  a  Christian 
differ  from  that  of  a  pagan,  or  even  from  the  hut  of  a  sav¬ 
age  ?  And  to  be  true  courtesy  it  must  not  be  a  mask  put  on 
for  an  occasion  and  then  laid  aside,  but  a  habit  springing 
from  the  interior  life,  from  the  thoughts  of  the  mind  and 
the  affections  of  the  heart, — just  as  the  veins  of  the  maple- 
wood,  and  the  rich  tints  of  the  mahogany,  and  the  lovely 
colors  of  the  rose  are  the  work  of  the  vital  sap  in  tree  and 
flower,  not  the  artifice  of  human  industry. 

But  we  specially  insist  on  the  necessity  of  home-bred 
courtesy  for  boys,  and  from  their  earliest  boyhood,  if  you 
would  have  it  become  a  second  nature.  We  plead  this 
necessity  to  every  mother  of  the  laboring  and  the  middle 
classes.  For, — be  it  said  without  offense  to  any, — the 
courtesy  which  distinguished  the  ancestors  of  these  classes 
in  the  old  European  homesteads  has  been  sadly  forgotten 
in  the  new.  People  who  rise  in  the  world, — and  here  it  is 
free  to  all  classes  to  rise, — are  anxious  to  show  that  they 
are  rising  or  ham  risen, — and  hence  that  offensiveness  of 
self-assertion  or  the  no  less  offensive  display  of  excessive 
politeness  which  are  meant  to  tell  the  beholder  that  “  we 
are  somebody  !  ” 

Young  people  are  quite  earnest  in  claiming  to  be  “  ladies  ” 
and  “  gentlemen  ;  ”  but  the  important  thing  is  to  be  gentle , 
to  possess  that  habitual  gentleness,  the  sister  of  piety,  which 
is  sure  to  produce  courtesy,  and  without  which  there  never 
has  been  and  never  will  be  a  true  lady  or  gentleman.  Go 
into  Andalusia :  the  Spanish  farmer  there  will  start  from 
his  home  amid  the  mountains  to  carry  his  crop  of  wine 
twenty,  forty,  sixty  miles  or  more  to  the  nearest  town,  or  fur¬ 
ther  still  to  the  best  market.  He  will  hear  early  mass  before 
he  starts,  and  fill  his  pockets  with  dried  figs  and  peppers 
of  which  he  will  make  his  noonday  meal  on  stopping  at  a 
well-known  fountain  or  well  on  the  road.  The  water  is  his 


SISTERS  EOT  TO  BE  THEIR  BROTHERS’  SERVANTS.  279 


only  beverage, — and  there  is  not  a  well  or  a  spring  within 
hundreds  of  miles  whose  qualities  he  is  not  familiar  with. 
His  mules  are  laden  with  the  rich  wines  which  fetch  so  high 
a  price  in  London  and  New  York.  But  he  never  dreams  of 
tasting  them  on  his  way.  Speak  to  him  on  the  road  and  . 
you  will  be  charmed  with  his  dignity  of  manner  and  high¬ 
bred  courtesy.  Converse  with  him  in  the  posada  or  inn 
wrhere  he  spends  the  night,  and  you  will  have  a  still  more 
favorable  opportunity  of  estimating  his  real  civility  and 
intelligence.  You  will  say  that  such  a  race  is  a  race  of 
gentlemen. 

It  behooves  the  poor  man  and  the  laboring  man  among 
us  to  see  to  it  that  these  qualities  once  believed  to  be  inborn 
in  his  own  blood  shall  not  disappear  in  his  children  and 
grandchildren.  And  surely  it  behooves  the  well-born  and 
the  wealthy  that  true  courtesy  shall  not  disappear  from 
their  homes  with  true  piety. 

We  commend  this  reflection  to  mothers  and  fathers  alike  : 
can  true  piety  be  where  a  passionate  temper  rules  the  house, 
and  where  a  blow  and  a  curse  are  the  usual  accompany- 
ments  of  reproof  or  punishment  ?  We  beseech  parents  to 
think  well  of  this.  Let  them  never  suffer  themselves  to  be 
rude  toward  their  children  ;  and  let  them  never  tolerate  in 
these  anything  approaching  to  rudeness  toward  each  other. 

MOTHERS  MUST  HOT  ALLOW  THEIR  DAUGHTERS  TO  BE  THE 

SERVANTS  OF  THEIR  BROTHERS. 

There  are  sad  examples  of  the  fatal  mistake  made  by 
certain  unwise  and  weak  mothers  in  giving  their  boys,  as 
these  grow  up,  so  large  a  place  in  the  house  that  their 
daughters  either  seem  in  the  way  or  are  obliged  to  devote 
themselves  to  the  pleasure  and  caprice  of  their  brothers. 

Two  families  are  now  present  to  our  memory  in  which 
were  contrasted  the  principles  of  a  truly  Christian  educa¬ 
tion,  as  set  forth  above,  and  the  fostering  in  the  sons  of 
this  spirit  of  selfishness. 

The  latter  was  a  home  distinguished  for  its  wealth  ;  and 


280 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


when  the  sons,  grown  np  and  coming  home  from  college, 
brought  their  young  friends  and  acquaintance  with  them, 
they  were  allowed  to  be  the  absolute  masters  of  the  house, 
and  to  make  their  slaves  of  all  persons  in  it, — parents, 
sisters,  and  servants.  These  boys,  thus  made  the  gods  of 
the  household,  whom  all  therein  had  to  worship  and  obey, 
became  utterly  reckless  of  the  comfort  or  happiness  of 
everybody  about  them.  Brought  up  in  selfishness,  they 
gave  themselves  up  in  manhood  to  self-indulgence  and  dis¬ 
sipation,  broke  the  hearts  of  their  foolish  parents,  beggared 
their  sisters,  married  beneath  them,  and  went  every  one  of 
them  to  ruin. 

Not  so  their  next-door  neighbors.  They  had  seen  better 
days  before  they  came  to  their  present  abode.  But  the 
mother  was  the  embodiment  of  all  the  gentle  virtues  that 
ever  made  home  delightful.  The  sons,  when  the  day’ s  toil 
was  ended,  forgot,  or  seemed  to  forget,  their  own  fatigue  in 
making  their  mother  and  sisters  happy.  Every  device  that 
rare  culture  adorning  heartfelt  piety  could  think  of  was 
brought  nightly  into  play  to  make  the  ladies  believe  that 
they  were  the  princesses  of  a  fairy  palace.  And  this 
courtesy  and  gentleness  of  manners  followed  all  of  them 
through  life.  The  eldest  brother,  in  particular,  distin¬ 
guished  for  his  masculine  strength  and  chivalrous  patriot¬ 
ism,  was  blessed  with  a  wife,  nurtured  like  himself  by  a 
wise,  firm,  and  gentle  mother.  Their  children,  from  the 
first  dawn  of  reason,  were  sweetly  habituated  to  that  unself¬ 
ishness  and  gentle  courtesy  which  the  unobservant  stran¬ 
ger  might  mistake  for  weakness,  but  which,  to  the  eyes  of 
those  who  knew  them  well,  were  like  the  graceful  and 
lovely  creepers  trained  to  adorn,  but  not  to  conceal,  the  fair 
proportions,  rich  material,  and  exquisite  workmanship  of 
some  massive  classic  edifice. 

It  is  thus  that  you  have  to  work,  O  mothers.  Where 
what  seems  but  is  not  courtesy  or  genuine  politeness  ap¬ 
pears  in  a  man  or  a  woman,  the  least  shock  or  commotion 
will  show  how  superficial  and  hollow  is  the  quality  you 
might  be  tempted  to  admire.  False  courtesy  is  like  a  light 


I 


MAKE  HOME  THE  CENTER  OF  AMUSEMENT.  281 

veneering  of  beautiful  wood,  laid  over  the  coarse  grain  of 
common  material,  or  like  the  thin  layer  of  plastering  placed 
on  the  front  of  a  building  and  painted  to  resemble  marble 
or  granite ; — but  a  slight  knock  will  break  this  veneering 
and  lay  the  natural  coarse  grain  bare  to  the  eye,  and  the 
first  rain  or  the  first  thaw  after  a  frost  will  show  that  what 
you  mistook  at  a  distance  for  a  marble  palace  was  but  a 
wretched  sham. 

It  is  the  solid  material  of  nature,  enriched  by  a  long  and 
thorough  nurture,  that  can  receive  a  high  polish  and  keep 
it  for  ever.  Be  it  your  care,  mothers,  to  form  in  the  heart 
of  hearts  of  every  son  and  daughter  of  yours  the  solid,  sub¬ 
stantial  piety  and  gentleness  of  which  we  have  been  speak¬ 
ing.  This  is  the  structure  that  you  have  to  raise.  Its 
solidity  and  its  beauty*  fear  it  not,  will  resist  the  pelting  of 
rain  and  hail,  survive  the  action  of  the  summer’s  heat  and 
the  winter’ s  frost. 

MAKE  HOME  THE  ONLY  CENTER  OF  AMUSEMENT  FOR  YOUR 

SONS. 

The  training  of  daughters  is,  comparatively,  an  easy  and 
a  delightful  task  for  mothers, — for  their  daughters  are  ever 
at  home  ;  but  it  is  far  otherwise  with  boys.  An  irresistible 
impulse  leads  these  to  seek  companionship  and  amusement 
outside  of  the  home.  Hence  arise  most  of  the  serious  dan¬ 
gers  and  temptations  for  boys. 

One  of  a  good  and  wise  mother’ s  most  useful  industries  is 
to  make  home  necessary  to  her  sons.  Let  her  provide  for 
them  there  everything  which  can  amuse  and  delight  as  well 
as  instruct ;  and  let  her  also  encourage  her  boys  to  bring 
their  young  friends  and  companions  home.  She  will  there¬ 
by  be  able  to  see  who  and  what  these  are,  so  as  to  select 
such  as  may  be  profitable  companions  and  safe  friends  for 
after-life. 

We  need  not  insist  on  the  prudence  which  a  mother  must 
use  in  keeping  away  from  her  home  and  companionship 
with  her  children  the  rude  and  the  vicious.  She  has  to 
avoid  giving  offense  ;  she  alone  can  find  means  to  unite 


282 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


firmness,  decision,  and  gentleness  in  guarding  her  dear  ones 
from  evil. 

At  any  rate,  when  your  boys  have  grown  up,  it  must  be  a 
part  of  your  duty  to  entertain  hospitably  such  friends  as 
they  may  invite  to  your  home.  Should  you  see  in  these 
qualities  which  render  them  unsafe  companions  for  your 
children,  your  tact  and  motherly  love  will  surely  find  a  way 
to  warn  these  against  such  associations.  Only,  iet  it  be 
apparent  in  your  whole  conduct  that  you  are  solely  guided 
by  your  sense  of  duty  and  the  purest  love  for  every  child 
Of  yours. 

Make  it  also  your  duty  to  accompany  your  grown-up 
sons  and  daughters  to  every  sort  of  public  amusement  which 
you  may  sanction.  If  this  precaution  is  a  most  necessary 
one  in  the  case  of  your  boys,  it  is  indispensable  in  that  of 
your  girls.  Oh  !  if  parents  among  the  laboring  classes  only 
knew  the  irreparable  ruin  caused  every  year  by  their  per¬ 
mitting  their  young  sons  and  daughters  to  frequent  these 
abominations  called  low  theaters  and  free  dances,  without 
a  father  or  a  mother's  eye  to  overlook  them  !  We  say  the 
same  of  “  excursions,”  gotten  up  for  no  matter  what  pur¬ 
pose  :  no  mother  should  allow  her  daughter  to  go  to  such 
places  without  accompanying  her,  and  no  father,  who  fears 
God,  and  has  at  heart  the  perseverance  of  his  son  in  piety 
and  purity,  should  permit  him  to  mix  with  such  gatherings 
without  being  there  himself  to  protect  him.  Indeed, — and 
the  most  enlightened  and  experienced  will  support  us  in 
the  assertion, — the  less  the  children  and  young  people  of 
the  laboring  classes  know  of  such  assemblages  and  amuse¬ 
ments  the  better  will  it  be  for  the  health  of  body  and  soul. 

A  CONCLUDING  ADVICE.  v 

We  hear,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  of  women  of  for¬ 
tune  founding  institutions  of  charity  or  rearing  splendid 
churches  at  their  sole  expense.  It  does  seem  a  noble  under¬ 
taking  on  which  to  bestow  one’s  fortune  and  one’s  labor, — 
this  rearing  of  a  perfect  temple  to  the  worship  of  the  most 
high  God.  But  the  formation  in  piety,  in  knowledge,  in  the 


A  CONCLUDING  ADVICE. 


283 


practice  of  all  goodness  of  a  single  child  is,  in  the  sight  of 
God,  a  something  far  more  glorious,  far  more  meritorious. 
Time  lays  low  the  most  solid,  beautiful,  and  costly  struc¬ 
tures  planned  by  human  genius,  reared  and  decorated  by 
the  rarest  skill ;  but  the  soul  of  your  boy  is  to  outlive  time 
itself,  is  destined  to  be  happy  with  its  Creator  in  eternity, 
when  the  sun  himself  will  be  quenched  in  the  firmament, 
and  the  starry  heavens  folded  up  and  cast  aside  like  a  worn- 
out  garment. 

Will  you  labor  to  enrich  that  dear  soul  with  virtues  whose 
energies  shall  fail  not  when  even  fire  shall  cease  to  burn  and 
light  to  be  needful  to  the  eye  ?  Will  you  adorn  it  with 
these  charities  of  earth  and  heaven  which  will  form  its 
ornament  and  its  crown  near  the  throne  of  God  long  after 
the  last  star  will  have  ceased  to  shine  in  the  immensities 
around  us  % 

Oh  !  what  temple  can  be  compared  to  your  child  for  whom 
Christ  died,  whom  he  purchased  from  hell  with  his  own 
blood,  and  whom  he  wills  you  to  help  in  making  a  godlike 
man  ! 

For  this  you  need  no  fortune,  no  riches, — nothing  but  the 
love  and  devotion,  the  industry  and  perseverance  of  a  true 
woman’s,  true  mother’s  heart. 

When  the  poor,  persecuted,  but  fearless  prophet,  Elias, 
had  to  fly  his  own  country  and  take  refuge  among  the  ene¬ 
mies  of  his  God  and  his  race,  he  was  bidden  to  go  to  a  poor 
widow- woman  at  Sarephta  on  the  sea-coast.  “When  he 
was  come  to  the  gate  of  the  city,  he  saw  the  widow- woman 
gathering  sticks,  .  .  .  and  said  to  her :  Give  me  a  little 

water  in  a  vessel,  that  I  may  drink.  And  when  she  was 
going  to  fetch  it,  he  called  after  her,  saying :  Bring  me  also, 
I  beseech  thee,  a  morsel  of  bread  in  thy  hand.  And  she 
answered  :  As  the  Lord  thy  God  liveth,  I  have  no  bread,  but 
only  a  handful  of  meal  in  a  pot,  and  a  little  oil  in  a  cruse ; 
behold,  I  am  gathering  two  sticks,  that  I  may  go  in  and 
dress  it  for  me  and  my  son,  that  we  may  eat  it,  and  die.”  * 


*  3  Kings,  cliap.  xvii. 


284 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Surely  here  was  poverty  on  the  part  of  the  mighty 
prophet  who  could  shut  up  the  heavens  for  seven  years, 
and  the  very  extremity  of  destitution  on  the  part  of  this 
generous-hearted  widow.  She  gave  to  the  man  of  God  all 
she  had  in  the  world, — all  that  stood  between  death  by  hun¬ 
ger,  and  her  boy  and  herself  ! 

God  repaid  her  well,  however :  hunger  was  provided 
against  by  the  prophet’s  miraculous  power,  and  a  still 
greater  miracle  rewarded  both  mother  and  son,  for  the  lat¬ 
ter  was  brought  back  by  Elias  from  death  to  life. 

How,  think  you,  after  this  wonderful  providence  over 
herself  and  her  only  one,  ought  this  mother  to  have  reared 
her  boy  ?  In  the  full  knowledge,  the  unbounded  love,  and 
the  faithful  service  of  the  God  of  Israel.  Indeed  the  Jew¬ 
ish  traditions  say  that  she  gave  up  the  lad  to  Elias  to  be  his 
servant  and  inseparable  companion  ever  after.  She  is  men¬ 
tioned  by  our  Lord  in  the  gospel ;  her  memory  and  that  of 
her  boy  shall  live  among  men  as  long  as  the  world  itself  ; 
and  in  eternity  they  shall  shine  like  twin  stars  among  the 
hosts  of  the  blessed. 

So  this  poor  but  great-souled  woman  made  her  son  like 
herself — ever  ready  to  give  everything,  even  life  itself,  for 
God  and  the  poor !  Do  not  say  that  you  are  too  poor  to 
rear  godlike  sons. 

Are  you  a  wealthy  or  a  noble  mother  ?  Then  remember 
the  widowed  mother  of  the  great  St.  John  Chrysostom. 
She  lost  her  husband,  a  general  officer  in  high  command  in 
the  imperial  armies,  when  she  was  in  her  twentieth  year. 
Though  solicited,  and  pressed  to  marry  again, — being  very 
beautiful  and  wealthy, — the  noble  lady  resolved  to  give  her 
life  to  God  and  the  education  of  her  infant  son.  Thence¬ 
forward  her  whole  time  and  industry  were  devoted  to  that 
divine  labor  of  forming  a  man  worthy  of  being  a  true  fol¬ 
lower  of  Christ.  Other  masters  aided  her,  when  early  boy¬ 
hood  was  over,  to  cultivate  his  mind.  But  the  culture  of 
that  great  heart  was  her  work.  And  how  beautiful  was 
that  heart,  how  godlike  the  life  of  St.  John  Chrysostom, 
the  admiration  of  fourteen  hundred  years  can  attest. 


A  POOR  MOTHER  AND  HER  TWO  NOBLE  ORPHANS.  28 0 

But  you  may  think  that  the  examples  of  these  remote  ages 
do  not  apply  aptly  to  our  own  ;  that  the  heroines  of  Scrip¬ 
ture  or  the  heroic  women  of  the  early  Church  are  too  far 
above  the  mediocrity,  the  commonplace  virtue  of  modern 
times.  This  we  do  not  admit.  Soldiers  in  a  vast  camp  cov¬ 
ering  many  miles  of  plain  and  forest  can  see  but  little  of 
what  is  passing  around  them,  and  hear  only  the  voices  of 
their  immediate  neighbors.  Those  who  come  after  us  will 
be  like  people  looking  down  from  a  lofty  vantage-ground 
on  camp  and  battle-field,  taking  in  at  a  glance  whole  armies 
and  their  positions,  and  marking  the  actions  of  the  most 
heroic.  A  hundred  years  hence  the  names  of  the  saintly  in 
life  will  be  brought  out  distinctly  in  the  annals  of  God’s 
Church  by  the  action  of  the  Spirit  of  Truth,  who  abideth 
with  her  evermore.  And  who  can  say  how  many  heroic 
souls  may  thus  shine  forth  resplendently  from  what  seems 
to  our  near-sightedness  a  mass  of  undistinguishable  medi¬ 
ocrity  ? 

A  POOR  MOTHER  AND  HER  TWO  NOBLE  ORPHANS. 

Take  the  facts  in  this  short  narrative  as  illustrating  one 
instance  of  true  motherly  love,  rewarded  by  heroism  in 
very  young  children. 

A  lady  of  high  social  position,  but  far  higher  in  God’ s 
favor,  rich  in  charity  and  in  all  the  merits  of  manifold  good 
works,  but  not  overburdened  with  worldly  wealth,  was 
summoned  away  from  the  head  of  her  table  and  the  delight¬ 
ful  conversation  of  her  large  family  by  a  pressing  case  of 
want.  “  A  little  boy,  weeping  bitterly  for  his  dead  mother, 
was  ” — so  the  servant  said— “asking  for  the  good  lady  in 
the  reception-room.”  She  went  to  him  without  a  moment’s 
delay,  heard  the  pitiable  tale  which  the  child’s  stifled  sobs 
made  more  eloquent  than  any  words,  and  without  going 
back  to  the  dinner-table,  she  hastily  got  ready  to  accom¬ 
pany  the  little  mourner.  On  the  way  to  the  house  of  death 
the  lady  was  struck  by  his  beautiful  features,  his  air  of 
gentility  and  good-breeding,  as  well  as  by  the  scrupuloas 
neatness  of  his  poor  threadbare  clothing. 


286 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


She  was  ushered  into  an  upper  room,  where  some  neigh¬ 
boring  women  had  already  washed  and  laid  out  the  corpse, 
— a  young  woman  about  thirty,  seemingly,  on  whose  thin 
emaciated  features  dwelt,  together  with  the  awful  beauty 
and  serenity  which  the  Angel  of  Death  bestows,  a  purity 
and  delicacy  of  outline  that  bespoke  good  blood,  and  that 
sweet  radiance  which  the  joy  of  a  happy  soul  leaves  behind 
on  its  companion  clay,  as  the  sure  pledge  of  a  blissful  resur¬ 
rection.  There  was  a  little  girl  between  five  and  six,  most 
fair  and  angelic  to  look  upon,  dressed  scantily,  but  with  the 
same  neatness  that  was  apparent  in  her  brother’s  clothing, — 
while  the  room  and  its  furniture  all  wore  the  same  air  of 
exquisite  neatness  and  tidiness.  It  was  evident  that  the 
surplus  articles  had  been  parted  with,  one  after  the  other, 
to  support  life  and  pay  the  doctor’s  bill. 

The  lady  was  deeply  touched  by  all  she  saw,  and  drawn 
at  once  to  the  two  fatherless  and  motherless  orphans.  She 
embraced  them  tenderly,  provided  for  all  their  immediate 
wants,  furnished  everything  necessary  for  a  decent  funeral, 
and  then  took  counsel  with  her  husband  as  to  how  the  two 
children  should  be  disposed  of. 

They  were  of  Anglo-Irish  parentage.  Their  father,  un¬ 
fortunate  in  business  at  home,  had  come  to  Hew  York  with 
the  hope  of  improving  his  fortunes.  But  overwork,  a  se¬ 
vere  cold,  and  a  climate  of  extremes  had  brought  on  rapid 
consumption,  and  he  died,  leaving  his  children  penniless 
and  his  wife  heart-broken.  She  bore  up  bravely,  however, 
doing  with  her  needle  whatever  she  could  to  keep  a  tempo¬ 
rary  home  above  her  orphans,  and  devoting  daily  a  specified 
time  to  their  education.  Her  noble  boy,  William,  begin¬ 
ning  his  eleventh  year,  was  to  her  both  a  great  comfort 
and  a  great  help.  He  did  all  her  errands  and  most  of  her 
marketing, — for,  alas,  the  double  hardship  of  her  lot  told 
speedily  on  a  very  delicate  constitution,  and  it  became 
soon  but  too  evident  that  she  was  about  to  follow  her  hus¬ 
band. 

Too  proud  and  independent  to  seek  or  to  accept  aid  from 
the  humble  families  of  her  poor  neighborhood,  she  parted 


A  POOR  MOTHER  AND  HER  TWO  NOBLE  ORPHANS.  287 

■ 

with  everything  but  the  most  indispensable  articles ;  and 
then  the  end  came. 

No  sooner  was  the  funeral  over,  than  steps  were  taken  to 
have  William  complete  his  schooling,  and  his  little  sister 
sent  to  an  institution  where  she  would  be  cared  for  and 
brought  up  by  one  of  our  admirable  Sisterhoods.  When, 
however,  Willie  was  informed  of  his  kind  protectress’s 
intention,  he  was  overwhelmed  with  grief,  and  besought 
the  lady  in  the  most  piteous  terms  not  to  separate  him 
from  his  sister.  “  She  is  all  I  have  in  the  world,”  he  said  : 

‘ 4 1  can  work  for  her.  If  I  only  had  a  few  dollars,  with  a 
basket,  some  books  and  pamphlets,  or  other  things,  I  might 
go  about  selling.  I  could  earn  money  enough  to  support 
us  both  after  a  few  weeks.  .  .  .  Only  try  me,  dear  ma¬ 

dam,”  the  manly  little  fellow  pleaded;  “and  if  you  will 
only  be  kind  to  us,  and  see  my  little  sister  every  day,  I 
know  God  will  bless  me.  My  dear  mama  promised  me  He 
would ;  and  oh !  I  know  she  is  praying  for  us  both  in 
heaven.  .  .  .”  How  could  he  be  refused  ?  Besides,  both 
the  lady  and  her  husband  saw  here  a  character  so  noble,  a 
spirit  so  manly  and  self-reliant,  and  so  pious  withal,  that 
they  at  once  resolved  to  foster  these  admirable  dispositions. 
The  house-rent  was  paid  three  months  in  advance,  a  supply 
of  fuel  and  provisions  was  laid  in ;  and  the  furniture  was 
made  more  comfortable  for  the  little  ones,  warm  clothing 
and  linen  was  purchased  for  both,  and  Willie  got  his  basket 
well  stocked  with  all  the  articles  which  he  was  likely  to 
dispose  of.  His  delight  was  as  unbounded  as  his  grati¬ 
tude. 

His  benefactress,  on  her  way  to  early  mass  one  morning, 
called  in  to  see  her  interesting  charge.  The  children  were 
up,  the  room  was  swept  and  clean  as  a  new  pin  ;  the  little 
tea-kettle  was  singing  on  a  bright  fire,  and  the  little  table 
for  two  was  covered  with  a  snow-white  cloth,  with  bread 
and  butter  waiting  for  young  appetites.  As  the  lady  en¬ 
tered  and  took  all  this  in  at  a  glance,  Willie  was  standing 
over  his  little  sister,  chatting  merrily  with  her  while  he 
combed  her  long  golden  locks.  It  was  a  pretty  picture,  and 


288 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


went  to  the  heart  of  the  true  woman  who  stood  looking  at 
the  pair. 

Another  morning  a  lady  of  the  family  called  about  the 
same  hour,  and  found  the  brave-hearted  boy  washing  his 
sister’ s  white  apron !  For  he  could  not  bear  to  have  her 
wear  anything  soiled.  Indeed,  the  boy’s  spirit  of  self- 
respect  and  independence  had  led  him  to  resolve  to  wash 
his  own  and  her  linen  till  such  time  as  they  could  afford  to 
pay  for  the  washing. 

The  story  of  these  little  orphans  was  soon  known  among 
their  benefactress’  s  large  circle  of  acquaintance,  and  many 
were  ready  to  befriend  and  assist  them.  Still  she  thought 
it  better  to  spare  the  praiseworthy  pride  of  the  boy,  and 
help  him  quietly  to  make  his  own  way  to  fortune.  He  was 
sent  to  a  night-school,  and  himself  and  his  sister  were  taken 
on  Sundays  to  the  home  of  their  generous  friend,  where 
every  one  vied  to  teach  them,  and  make  them  happy.  The 
mistress  of  the  home  allowed  some  of  her  lady  friends  the 
privilege  of  replenishing  Willie’s  basket  from  time  to  time. 
And  so  the  boy  prospered.  His  delight  was  inconceivable 
to  be  able  thus  to  support  his  little  sister,  while  she,  emu¬ 
lating  his  generosity  of  spirit,  kept  steadily  to  her  room, 
locking  the  door  against  all  intruders,  learning  to  keep  the 
fire  burning  brightly  for  Willie’s  return,  watering  the  flowers 
on  the  windows,  and  applying  with  her  whole  heart  to  im¬ 
prove  herself  in  reading.  And  was  there  not  an  angel  there, 
albeit  invisible  to  the  bodily  eye,  who  knew  how  to  whisper 
bright  thoughts  and  sweet  hopes  to  the  childish  soul, — the 
germs  of  future  noble  aspirations  and  generous  deeds  ? 

In  this  way  several  months  elapsed,  when  a  letter  came 
from  England  informing  the  orphans  that  they  had  been 
left  a  very  handsome  fortune.  They  parted  weeping  from 
her  who  had  been  to  them  a  second  mother :  who  knows 
but  ere  she  dies  she  may  yet  have  glorious  tidings  of  Willie 
and  his  sister  \ 

LET  YOUE  SONS  BE  GOD-FEAEING  AND  SELF-EELIANT, 

We  pause  here.  There  is  no  home  that  our  voice  can 


LET  YOUR  SONS  BE  GOD-FEARING. 


289 


reach  in  which  this  simple  lesson  may  not  be  thoroughly 
appreciated  by  even  the  most  poverty-stricken,  and  taken 
to  heart  by  her  sons,  if  the  mother  will  only  understand 
aright  her  own  best  interests  even  in  this  world.  No  man 
is  braver  than  the  God-fearing  man,  no  man  has  more  self- 
respect  and  true  self-reliance.  Were  we  to  succeed  in  making 
the  sons  of  our  laboring  poor  to  be  at  once  God-fearing  and 
self-reliant,  we  should  not  begrudge  devoting  to  the  illus¬ 
tration  of  these  noble  qualities  every  hour  of  life  God  may 
spare  us, — so  deeply  are  w^e  convinced  that  the  fear  of  God 
is  the  strong  foundation  of  all  true  manliness,  and  that  one 
of  the  most  precious  attributes  of  Christian  manhood  is  that 
humble  self-reliance  springing  from  the  certainty  of  His 
ever-present  grace  and  the  continual  generous  sense  of  duty. 

We  resume  our  teaching  in  this  chapter,  by  repeating  that 
if  mothers  will  only  be  faithful  to  co-operate  with  the  Holy 
Spirit  in  this  great  work  of  making  of  their  sons  true  chil¬ 
dren  of  God,  together  with  the  natural  “  great  qualities  and 
admirable  talents”  bestowed  on  them  by  the  Creator,  the 
culture  we  have  been  detailing  will  be  sure  to  result  in  pro¬ 
ducing  noble  Christian  men  and  model  citizens.  Every  one 
who  will  know  a  son  of  yours  brought  up  in  this  fashion 
will  say  of  him  in  life  and  death :  “  I  find  in  him  these  vir¬ 
tues  without  which  all  (natural)  excellence  is  deformity, — 
namely,  modesty,  meekness,  tranquillity,  religion,  sanctity, 
and  integrity.”  What  a  panegyric  such  praise  would  be 
both  for  mother  and  for  son  ! 

No  less  perfect  and  admirable  would  be  the  women  sent 
forth  from  every  home  in  our  midst.  Let  young  girls  take 
the  following  words,  as  they  would  a  nosegay  of  rarest  and 
sweet-scented  flowers,  and  enjoy  again  and  again  their  deli¬ 
cious  perfume : 

“All  virtue  lies  in  woman,  and  the  health  of  the  world. 
God  has  created  nothing  so  good  as  a  woman,  No  one  can 
find  a  limit  to  the  praise  of  women.  He  who  can  tell  where 
the  sunshine  ends  may  also  proclaim  the  end  of  their  praise. 
Women  are  pure  and  good  and  fair,  they  impart  worthiness 
and  make  men  worthy.  Nothing  is  so  like  the  angels  as 
19 


290 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


their  beautiful  form,  and  even  the  mind  of  an  angel  dwells 
in  woman.”  * 

TBUTII  IN  ACTION  INSEPARABLE  EKOM  THE  PROFESSION  OP 

TRUTH. 

To  your  sons  and  daughters  alike, — to  such  noble  young 
men  and  women  as  the  Church  expects  you  to  prepare  for 
society,  we  commend  these  golden  words  of  one  of  the 
greatest  men  of  all  time,  and  the  loveliest  saint  of  modern 
times :  f 

“For  all  the  estates  of  Savoy  and  France,  and  for  the 
whole  empire,  I  would  not  carry  a  false  paper  in  my  bosom. 
I  belong  to  the  blood  of  the  ancient  Gauls.  What  is  on  my 
tongue  is  precisely  what  comes  from  my  heart.  The  prudence 
of  the  world  and  the  artifices  of  the  flesh  belong  to  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  the  world  ;  but  the  children  of  God  have  no  double 
meaning  and  no  dissimulation.” 

Or,  again:  “The  spirit  of  chivalry  (common  to  all  true 
Christian  men  and  women)  is  to  the  highest  degree  delicate 
and  susceptible  :  once  convince  it  that  an  action  is  base  and 
criminal,  and  it  shrinks  from  it  with  a  depth  of  moral  feel¬ 
ing  such  as  leads  the  poet  in  the  Indian  legend  to  represent 
sin  as  something  so  incapable  of  concealment  that  every 
transgression  is  not  only  known  to  conscience  and  to  all 
divine  spirits,  but  felt  with  a  sympathetic  shudder  by  those 
elements  themselves  which  we  call  inanimate,  by  the  sun, 
moon,  fire,  air,  the  heavens,  the  earth,  the  flood,  and  the 
deep,  as  a  crying  outrage  against  nature  and  a  disarrange¬ 
ment  of  the  universe.”  X 


*  Ulrich  yon  Lichtenstein’s  Frauendienst. 

t  Digby. 


f  St.  Francis  of  Salep. 


CHAPTEE  XVI. 


DUTIES  OF  THE  MISTRESS  OF  THE  HOME  TOWARD  HER 
PARENTS  AND  HER  SERVANTS. 

The  sons  of  Wisdom  are  the  church  of  the  just ;  and  their  generation,  obe¬ 
dience  and  love.  .  .  .  He  that  honoreth  his  mother  is  as  one  that  layeth 

up  a  treasure.  He  that  honoreth  his  father  shall  have  joy  in  (his  own)  chil¬ 
dren.  ...  He  that  feareth  the  Lord  honoreth  his  parents,  and  will  serve 
them  as  his  masters  that  brought  him  into  the  world. — Ecclesiasticus  iii. 

In  the  house  of  a  just  man  living  by  faith,  and  still  journeying  far  from  the 
Celestial  City,  even  he  who  commands  is  the  servant  of  those  whom  he  seems 
to  command  ;  for  he  does  not  rule  through  a  passion  for  domineering,  but 
through  the  desire  of  fulfilling  his  duty  ;  not  through  the  pride  of  authority, 
but  through  the  mercy  of  providing  for  others. — St.  Augustine. 

If  thou  have  a  faithful  servant,  let  him  be  to  thee  as  thy  own  soul :  treat 
him  as  a  brother. — Ecclesiasticus  xxxiii.  31. 

»  , 

I. 

It  will  not,  we  trust,  be  deemed  superfluous  if  we  close 
these  chapters  treating  of  the  dignity  and  the  duties  of  the 
mistress  of  the  home  as  wife  and  mother,  by  reminding  her 
that  she  stands  herself  in  the  relation  of  child  to  those  who 
are  her  own  or  her  husband’s  parents.  Marriage  among 
us,  and  by  virtue  of  the  laws  which  govern  us,  dissolves 
the  tie  of  obedience  which  children  till  then  owed  to  their 
parents.  But  the  obligation  of  reverence  and  love  remains 
through  life. 

The  patriarchal  system,  which  prevailed  in  the  first  ages 
of  the  world,  made  the  parental  authority  much  more  abso¬ 
lute  and  persistent :  the  married  groups,  though  living  out¬ 
side  of  the  patriarch’ s  home,  continued  none  the  less  to  pay 
him,  as  long  as  he  lived,  not  only  love  and  reverence,  but 

291 


292 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


entire  obedience.  That  his  wife  had  her  full  share  of  his 
authority  there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  though  it  was 
restricted  to  the  sphere  of  purely  domestic  duties.  There 
remains,  however,  among  one  of  the  most  ancient  races  on 
earth,  the  Chinese,  laws  and  customs  dating  from  time  im¬ 
memorial,  which  throw  no  little  light  on  the  probable  na¬ 
ture  and  extent  of  maternal  authority  and  influence  in  the 
remotest  historical  times. 

The  ancient  laws  of  China  give  a  father  the  fullest  power 
over  his  children, — all  power,  indeed,  save  that  of  life  and 
death, — and  this  power  lasts  as  long  as  life,  and  follows  the 
children  in  every  position  or  rank  they  may  occupy.  The 
son  of  a  peasant  may  become  a  mandarin,  the  governor  of 
a  province,  a  prime  minister,  a  commander-in-chief ;  but  the 
son,  though  never  so  far  in  rank  and  social  position  above 
his  parents,  is  still  bound  to  the  same  rigorous  obedience, 
the  same  duties  of  reverence  and  filial  piety. 

A  commander-in-chief  will  come  down  from  horseback  in 
presence  of  his  whole  army  to  do  homage  to  his  father  or 
mother,  a  magistrate  will  descend  from  his  seat  of  authority 
as  soon  as  he  perceives  his  parent  in  the  audience.  In  the 
imperial  court  the  person  most  honored  and  revered  by 
sovereign  and  courtiers  alike,  is  the  emperor’s  mother. 
And  this  holds  good  in  every  family,  high  or  low,  in  the 
kingdom ;  the  parents  are  the  absolute  sovereigns  of  their 
own  little  home-empire.* 

This  universal  reverence  for  parental  authority  is  the  very 
basis  of  social  and  domestic  life,  as  well  as  of  the  political 
constitution  of  this  vast  empire,  comprising  one- third  of  the 
entire  human  race.  And  second  only  to  this  deep-seated 
filial  piety  is  the  respect  for  old  age. 

“  Honor  as  you  would  your  own  father,  whoever  is  twice 
as  old  as  yourself,  and  respect,  as  if  he  were  your  elder 
brother,  the  man  who  is  ten  years  older  than  you.”  Such 
is  the  prescription  of  the  Li-ki ,  the  great  Chinese  Ritual. 


*  See  most  instructive  details,  in  F.  Le  Play’s  Ouvriers  des  Deux  Maudes,  vol. 
iv.,  p.  116.  Paris,  18G2. 


DUTIES  OF  THE  MISTRESS  TO  IIER  PARENTS.  293 

Hence  natives  of  that  country  will  bestow  the  title  of  lao- 
yeh ,  “  venerable  father,”  on  every  man  whom  they  wish  to 
treat  with  respect. 

Again,  when  a  man  has  rendered  illustrious  services  to 
his  country,  or  deserved  in  any  way  to  be  raised  to  the  rank 
of  noble,  the  rank  is  conferred  on  his  parents,  not  on  him¬ 
self.  “The  reason  is,”  says  the  Li-ki ,  “that  we  easily 
persuade  ourselves  that  the  parents  of  a  virtuous  man  must 
have  been  themselves  models  of  virtue.” 

“The  more  I  consider,”  says  the  Emperor  Kang-hi,  “the 
principles  which  induced  the  ancient  emperors  to  govern 
the  world  by  the  sentiments  of  filial  piety,  the  more  am 
I  convinced  that  they  wished  thereby  to  go  back  to  the 
original  form  of  government,  and  to  insist  on  what  is  essen¬ 
tial  to  it.  Filial  piety  is  the  principle  and  the  term  of  all 
virtue.”  * 

This  reverence  for  father  and  mother  is  also  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  the  Chinese  religion.  It  is  the  center  of  public  and 
private  worship.  “The  hall  of  ancestors,”  says  th e  Li-ki, 
“is  the  first  structure  erected  when  a  palace  is  built,  the 
vases  destined  to  the  commemoration  of  the  dead  are  the 
first  to  be  purchased  :  no  matter  how  poor  one  may  be,  one 
must  not  sell  these  vases,  nor  cut  down  the  cemetery  trees.” 
At  Pekin,  in  the  ancient  “red  city,”  still  stands  the  Tai- 
miao ,  a  spacious  temple  covered  with  red  brick,  and  dedi¬ 
cated  to  the  ancestors  of  the  reigning  family.  And  in  the 
remotest  provinces  of  the  empire  an  apartment  may  be 
found  in  the  peasant’s  hut,  appropriated  to  a  like  purpose. 

W e  have  gone  out  of  the  beaten  path  of  illustration  to 
show  how  ancient,  wide-spread,  and  deep-seated  is  this 
beautiful  sentiment  of  filial  piety,  the  religion  of  the  sweet¬ 
est  and  holiest  gratitude. 

No  mother  who  is  true  to  nature  but  will,  as  age  advances, 
and  as  her  dear  parents  draw  near  the  grave,  exert  herself 
to  show  them  all  love,  honor,  and  reverence.  In  the  last 
chapter  we  have  shown  her  how  necessary  it  is  to  impress 


*  Quoted  by  Le  Play,  ibidem ,  p.  122. 


294 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


these  sentiments  on  the  heart  of  her  children.  Let  her  be¬ 
lieve  it ; — it  is  her  own  interest  we  were  then  pleading.  And 
it  is  her  own  happiness  we  wish  to  promote  by  what  we  say 
here.  The  young  and  active  and  energetic  mother  of  to-day 
will  be  the  aged,  feeble,  helpless  invalid  of  to-morrow, — to 
whom  the  loving  looks  and  loving  words,  the  heartfelt  rev¬ 
erence  and  veneration  of  her  dear  ones,  will  be  the  sweetest 
of  all  rewards. 

One  can  have  a  father  and  a  mother  but  once :  while  they 
are  yet  with  us  we  prize  not  as  we  ought  the  treasure 
their  presence  is  to  us,  and  we  often  allow  the  preoccupa¬ 
tions  and  pangs  of  the  day  to  make  us  overlook  the  duty  of 
giving  ourselves  heartily  to  making  them  comfortable  and 
happy.  We  hope  to  be  in  a  better  mood  on  the  morrow. 
But  that  morrow  never  comes  with  the  hoped-for  opportuni¬ 
ties,  and  brings  with  the  grief  of  their  loss  the  keen  regret 
of  having  neglected  those  who  never  neglected  us. 

In  the  Chinese  family,  most  minutely  described  in  the 
work  mentioned  above,  4  4  the  most  striking  characteristic,  as 
indeed  in  all  Chinese  families,  is  the  respect  shown  to  pa¬ 
rental  authority.  The  elder  brother  maintains  this  duty 
most  rigorously  by  his  own  example.  At  table  he  never 
tastes  food  till  his  mother  has  done  so  ;  and  he  respectfully 
offers  her,  first  of  all,  ’  every  fresh  fruit  or  vegetable  on  the 
board.  From  his  children  he  receives  in  turn  these  same 
marks  of  respectful  deference,  the  omission  of  which  would 
be  considered  a  crime.  While  a  father  may  beat  his  son, 
no  matter  how  old  the  latter  may  be,  the  son,  from  the  age 
of  sixteen  upward,  never  calls  his  parents  by  any  other  name 
than  dajun ,  ‘my  lords.’  ” 

W e  do  not  insist  on  the  practical  conclusions  to  be  drawn 
from  all  this.  Will  parents  exact  from  their  children  some 
such  show  of  respect  as  this  ?  Will  they  so  demean  them¬ 
selves  toward  their  dear  ones,  from  the  earliest  infancy  of 
the  latter,  that  this  respect  may  be  well  merited  and  heart¬ 
ily  accorded  ?  Will  they,  especially,  practice  toward  their 
own  parents  this  fundamental  and  sovereign  duty  of  love 
and  reverence  ?  Surely,  if  there  be  a  country  on  the  face  of 


NE  VER  P  UT  TO  URSELF  IN  TO  UR  CHILDRENS  PO  WER.  29 5 

the  globe,  in  which  this  sentiment  of  reverence  is  fast  dying 
out  from  heart  and  home  and  social  life,  it  is  the  country 
in  which  we  live, — so  proud  of  its  Christian  name  and  its 
advanced  civilization,  but  in  the  appreciation  and  practice 
of  the  beautiful  home- virtues  infinitely  below  the  heathens 
of  China. 

NEVER  PUT  YOURSELVES  IN  YOUR  CHILDREN’S  POWER. 

We  formulate  our  advice  this  way,  in  order  that  all  our 
readers  may  examine  their  consciences  on  this  point. 

“Give  not,”  says  the  Divine  Book,  “to  son  or  wife, 
brother  or  friend,  power  over  thee  while  thou  livest ;  and 
give  not  thy  estate,  to  another,  lest  thou  repent  and  tliou 
entreat  for  the  same.  As  long  as  thou  livest  and  hast 
breath  in  thee,  let  no  man  change  (dispossess)  thee.  For 
it  is  better  that  thy  children  should  ask  of  thee,  than  that 
thou  look  toward  the  hands  of  thy  children.”  * 

There  are  but  too  many  eloquent  examples  around  us  of 
the  unwisdom  of  parents  who  heed  not  the  voice  of  the  in¬ 
spired  teacher ;  of  parents  who  left  native  land  and  gave  a 
whole  life  of  earnest  and  uninterrupted  labor  to  making  a 
fortune  and  creating  a  comfortable  home  for  their  children, 
— slaving  and  almost  starving  themselves  to  give  them 
education  and  a  position,  and  whose  great  heart  could  not 
withhold  their  hands  from  giving  their  dear  ones  every 
thing  with  the  new  homes  in  which  they  saw  them  wedded 
and  well  to  do.  And  how  many  such  fathers  and  mothers 
have  been  and  are  still  left  to  pine  in  neglect  and  poverty 
by  the  very  children  they  loved  all  too  unwisely  ! 

“A  wise  son  maketh  a  father  joyful :  but  the  foolish 
man  despiseth  his  mother.  Honor  thy  father  in  work  and 
word,  and  all  patience.  That  a  blessing  may  come  upon 
thee  from  him,  and  his  blessing  may  remain  in  the  latter 
end.  The  father’s  blessing  establisheth  the  houses  of  the 
children  :  but  the  mother’s  curse  rooteth  up  the  foundation. 
Of  what  an  evil  fame  is  he  that  forsaketh  his  father  !  And 
he  is  accursed  of  God  that  angereth  his  mother !  ”  f 


*  Ecclesiasticus  xxxiii.  20,  21,  22. 


f  Ibidem ,  iii. 


296 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


The  real  practical  difficulty  in  the  way  regards  not  so 
much,  perhaps,  a  woman’s  reverence  toward  her  own  pa¬ 
rents,  as  what  is  due  to  those  of  her  husband.  Nor  does  the 
discharge  of  this  duty  offer  so  much  hardship  when  parents 
retain  their  own  home,  and  are  independent  of  their  married 
children.  Heart-burnings  mainly  arise  when  they  have  to 
look  to  these  for  support, — and  often  become  unbearable 
when  they  have  to  reside  beneath  the  same  roof. 

Then  it  is  that  the  mistress  of  the  household  needs  to  look 
up  to  God  for  her  motives  and  her  rules  of  action.  We  put 
aside  the  case  of  women  who  are  so  unnatural  and  so  un¬ 
christian  as  to  forget  what  is  due  to  their  own  aged  parents, 
to  their  husbands,  and  the  venerable  persons  to  whom  these 
owe  their  birth,  and,  it  may  be,  the  very  roof  which  covers 
the  ungrateful  wife.  A  husband’s  father  and  mother  be¬ 
come,  by  marriage,  the  wife’ s  father  and  mother ;  policy,  mere 
worldly  wisdom  and  practical  good  sense,  in  the  absence  of 
the  divine  law,  ought  to  teach  her  that  her  peace  and  her 
interest  would  be  best  secured  by  loving  her  parents-in-law. 

We  suppose  the  mother  who  reads  this  is  most  anxious  to 
have  God’ s  blessing,  the  love  and  respect  of  her  husband 
and  children  ;  all  this  she  can  only  have  by  showing  a  true 
and  heartfelt  affection  for  the  persons  who  stand,  within 
her  home,  as  the  representatives  of  God’s  fatherly  power 
and  love.  No  blessing  can  rest  upon  a  home  where  the 
wife  and  mother  makes  life  a  burden  and  the  bread  of  life 
most  bitter  to  the  parents  she  is  privileged  to  have  near  her. 

To  encourage  all  good  mothers, — women  true  to  the  no¬ 
blest  instincts  of  nature  and  the  most  solemn  teaching  of  the 
divine  law,  let  us  rather  warm  our  hearts  in  the  light  of  he¬ 
roic  examples, — such  as  very  many  in  all  classes  may  behold 
around  them  daily. 

Two  young  people,  of  excellent  family  both  of  them,  had 
married,  with  the  full  approbation  of  the  wife’s  parents, 
who  were  wealthy  and  much  respected,  but  sorely  against 
the  will  of  those  of  the  husband,  of  his  mother  especially. 

There  was  perfect  equality  on  both  sides.  But  the  young 
man,  during  a  tour  on  the  continent  of  Europe,  had  em- 


KINDNESS  TOWARD  ONE'S  PARENTS-IN-LAW.  297 


braced  the  Catholic  faith,  and  this  circumstance,  on  his  re¬ 
turn  home,  had  led  to  his  intimacy  with  the  family  into 
which  he  married.  Bitter  religious  prejudice  lay  at  the  bot¬ 
tom  of  the  opposition  made  by  both  his  parents,  while  his 
mother  persisted  in  saying  to  every  one  that  he  had  been 
inveigled  into  a  change  of  religion  by  his  beautiful  bride. 
The  truth  was,  that  the  young  people  had  scarcely  been  ac¬ 
quainted  when  the  change  took  place,  and  there  certainly 
was  then  no  attachment  on  either  side. 

The  young  man  was  disinherited  ;  but  this  cruel  treat¬ 
ment  did  not  shake  either  his  faith  or  his  affection.  He 
was  further  driven  to  hasten  his  nuptials  by  a  cruel  and 
scandalous  report  concerning  the  lady,  started,  too,  by  his 
own  mother.  Never  was  scandal  so  unfounded  and  so  ma¬ 
lignant. 

But  it  only  injured  the  originators.  The  innocent  child 
herself  was  kept  in  total  ignorance  of  the  rumor,  and  the 
other  relatives  of  the  gentleman’s  family  vied  with  each 
other  in  showing  their  detestation  of  the  slander. 

The  bridegroom  was  too  high-minded  to  beg  favors  from 
his  bigoted  father,  and  too  independent  to  accept  from  his 
father-in-law  the  handsome  settlement  which  the  latter 
wished  to  make  in  his  favor.  He  had  a  good  and  lucrative 
profession ;  he  was  himself  accomplished,  self-reliant,  and 
trustful  in  God’ s  protection  ;  he  loved  his  young  wife  with 
that  deep  love  of  pure  hearts  which  is  deepened  tenfold  by 
the  grace  of  the  sacrament.  And,  not  rashly  confident  of 
his  own  ability,  he  fixed  his  residence  in  a  large  city  far 
away  from  his  native  place.  Success  came  to  him  with  the 
divine  blessing,  which  they  both  sought  so  earnestly,  and 
year  after  year  he  rose  higher  and  higher  in  his  profession 
and  in  the  esteem  of  all  who  knew  him.  His  wife  looked 
up  to  him  with  a  sort  of  worship,  founded  on  the  intimate 
knowledge  of  his  worth, — of  the  talents  and  learning  which 
were  sanctified  by  a  piety  so  enlightened  and  so  simple. 
No  home  could  be  happier  than  theirs — no  bliss,  the  little 
wife  and  mother  thought,  could  equal  hers.  She  was 
afraid  of  its  very  excess, — and  begged  our  dear  Lord  daily 


298 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


to  send  her  a  cross  which  should  temper  the  unalloyed 
sweetness  of  her  lot.  It  came  in  His  good  time. 

She  had  been  several  years  married,  when  an  accident  made 
her  acquainted  with  the  scandal  about  herself  set  afloat 
by  her  mother-in-law.  Its  real  malignity,  however,  only 
dawned  on  her  by  degrees,  and  thus  the  terrible  force  of  the 
blow  was  broken.  Nevertheless  it  nearly  crushed  her  ;  and 
it  required  all  her  husband’s  tenderness  and  all  her  own 
piety  and  strength  of  soul  to  sustain  her.  She  had  a  very 
serious  illness  ;  for  the  rumor  in  its  worst  aspect  only 
reached  her  a  very  short  time  after  the  birth  of  her  second 
child.  While  she  was  thus  in  serious  danger,  her  husband 
wrote  to  his  father  informing  him  of  the  critical  state  to 
which  the  innocent  young  wife  was  brought  by  an  infamous 
slander  originating  with  his  own  mother. 

The  father,  who  had  not  lost  all  feeling  for  his  son,  and 
who,  besides,  was  proud  of  his  rising  fame,  was  heart- 
stricken  on  receiving  the  letter.  He  had  heard  of  the  re¬ 
port  against  his  daughter-in-law,  but  never  fancied  that  the 
vile  slander  had  his  own  wife  for  author.  He  for  one  did 
not  and  could  not  believe  it.  His  fault  lay  in  his  bigotry, 
his  exaggerated  notions  about  a  father’ s  authority  over  his 
son’s  conscience,  and  in  the  obstinacy  with  which  he  ad¬ 
hered  to  a  determination  once  taken.  From  every  direction 
he  had  heard  his  daughter-in-law  praised  for  every  quality 
of  mind  and  heart  and  person,  for  all  the  sweet  virtues  that 
can  make  a  perfect  woman,  wife,  and  mother ;  and  more 
than  once  he  felt  disposed  to  relent  toward  his  son.  The 
letter  filled  him  with  equal  grief  and  indignation. 

But  his  wife  only  met  his  reproof  and  his  questions  with 
haughty  scorn  and  a  fiercer  denunciation  of  her  son,  as  a 
most  ungrateful  child,  and  of  his  sick  wife  as  a  crafty, 
scheming  hypocrite.  Leaving  his  partner  to  the  evil  pas¬ 
sions  that  possessed  her,  he  hastened  to  his  son’s  home, 
atoned  with  manly  frankness  for  his  own  harsh  conduct, 
embraced  his  daughter  and  her  babes  with  all  a  father’s 
tenderness,  assured  the  patient  sufferer  that  no  one  among 
all  his  kinsfolk  or  acquaintance  ever  gave  credit  to  the 


HOW  LOVE  OVERCOMES  EVIL. 


299 


absurd  report,  and  by  liis  generous  reparation  recalled  the 
sick  one  to  health  and  happiness  once  more.  His  wife,  he 
said,  would  not  delay  to  see  the  wrong  she  had  done  and  to 
atone  for  it,  and  thus  the  happiness  of  his  children  seemed 
complete. 

But  the  inevitable  atonement  was  to  be  made  sooner  than 
he  anticipated,  and  in  a  way  that  he  could  not  foresee. 
During  his  absence  his  house — the  ancient  home  of  his 
family — was  burned  to  the  ground.  Ho  one  could  tell  how 
the  lire  began ;  and  as  it  was  in  the  country,  with  a  high 
wind  blowing  at  the  time,  no  effort  of  servants  or  neighbors 
availed  to  save  the  building,  with  its  precious  furniture  and 
library.  The  mistress  of  the  house  was,  it  was  said,  herself 
severely  injured  in  the  confusion. 

These  tidings  reached  her  husband  when  halfway  on  his 
homeward  journey,  and  seemed  to  his  conscience  like  a 
judgment  on  his  wife’s  unnatural  cruelty  and  his  own  harsh¬ 
ness  and  obstinacy.  Ho  sooner,  however,  had  his  son  and 
daughter-in-law  heard  of  the  calamity,  than  the  latter,  with 
the  impulse  of  true  charity,  besought  her  husband  to  fly  at 
once  to  his  parents,  and  to  bring  his  mother  back  with  him, 
that  she  might  receive  from  their  hands  all  the  tender  care 
her  misfortune  and  injuries  needed. 

With  what  eagerness  the  young  husband  hastened  to 
comply  with  his  wife’s  God-inspired  entreaty,  the  Christian 
reader  will  easily  conceive.  He  found  his  mother  only 
slightly  bruised,  though  sorely  afflicted  in  spirit.  The 
hand  of  God,  in  striking  her  in  its  justice,  had  also  touched 
her  heart  in  its  mercy.  She  had  done  many  acts  of  true 
charity  in  her  life,  and  these  now  pleaded  for  her  with  that 
Wisdom  which  disposeth  all  our  ways  for  its  own  ends. 

Ho  mother  ever  received  from  the  most  tenderly  loved 
child  so  warm  a  welcome  as  she  received  from  her  daughter- 
in-law.  It  was  truly  a  merciful  dispensation.  Soon  after 
the  burning  of  his  mansion,  the  sturdy  old  gentleman 
learned  that  the  bulk  of  his  fortune,  invested  in  what  had 
till  then  been  a  most  prosperous  venture,  had  been  utter¬ 
ly  swept  away  by  the  failure  of  the  concern.  This  news 


BOO 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


brought  on  a  fit  of  apoplexy.  He  lingered,  half -paralyzed, 
in  his  son’ s  house,  where  the  most  devoted  care  of  his  an¬ 
gelic  daughter-in-law,  and  all  the  comforting  assurances 
of  his  son,  availed  not  to  raise  the  crushed  spirit.  He  died 
under  the  elfects  of  a  second  stroke  of  the  fell  disease,  but 
not  till  he  had  again  and  again  prophesied  to  the  angel  who 
watched  by  him  night  and  day,  that  she  would  surely  be 
blessed  in  her  children.  “You  are  more  than  a  perfect 
woman,  my  love,”  he  would  say ;  “you  are  an  angel,  and 
the  very  atmosphere  of  your  house  is  heavenly.”  So  he 
passed  away,  finding  in  death  what  he  had  not  else  known, 
the  perfect  road  which  leads  to  God,  and  that  perfect  peace 
which  worlds  cannot  purchase. 

His  widow  survived  him  for  several  years.  She  was  given 
time  to  expiate  her  sin.  A  cruel  cancer  in  the  neck  tried 
her  patience  to  the  utmost  and  proved  the  generosity  of 
the  daughter  she  had  so  deeply  wronged,  and  whom  she  had 
learned  to  love  with  a  love  she  had  never  known  till  then. 
Month  after  month  did  that  devoted  one  and  her  husband 
lavish  on  their  parent  every  mark  of  the  most  untiring  affec¬ 
tion.  The  side  of  the  house  in  which  her  apartment  was, 
had  to  be  given  up  to  her,  so  nauseating  was  the  odor 
which  the  frightful  sore  emitted.  Yet  her  room  was  kept 
like  a  paradise.  One  of  the  young  wife’s  sisters,  worthy  of 
her  in  every  way,  volunteered  to  assist  her  in  taking  care  of 
the  sufferer.  She,  too,  felt  like  her  husband,  that  this  was 
true  charity,  and  wished  to  die  in  the  faith  of  her  fore¬ 
fathers.  She  needed  all  the  sublime  consolations  which  it 
imparts.  For  the  priest  who  ministered  to  her  frequently 
in  the  last  stage  of  the  terrible  disease,  often  declared  after¬ 
ward  that,  accustomed  as  he  was  to  every  form  of  human 
suffering,  he  never  had  beheld  anything  comparable  to  the 
appalling  loathsomeness  of  that  death-bed. 

And  yet  there  the  heroic  son  would  remain  with  his 
parent,  hour  after  hour,  reading  her  some  sweet  passage 
from  the  “  Imitation  of  Christ,”  a  few  verses  from  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  Passion,  or  reciting  with  the  agonized  patient 
some  favorite  form  of  prayer.  There,  too,  the  angelic  forms 


DUTIES  TOWARD  SERVANTS. 


801 


of  his  wife  and  sister-in-law  moved  about  silently,  whisper¬ 
ing  from  their  pure,  brave  hearts  such  words  of  love  and 
comfort  as  true  women’s  hearts  alone  can  find. 

“  Read  me  these  beautiful  words  once  more,”  she  could 
barely  say  in  an  almost  imperceptible  whisper  to  her 
daughter-in-law,  as  midnight  on  Good  Friday  was  at  hand. 
Her  son  was  absent  on  most  urgent  business,  and  no  one 
was  in  the  sick-room  but  the  devoted  little  wife.  And  she 
read  from  the  “ Imitation”  the  21st  chapter  of  the  third 
book,  beginning :  ‘  ‘  Above  all  things  and  in  all  things,  do 
thou,  my  soul,  rest  always  in  the  Lord,  for  he  is  the  eternal 
rest  of  the  saints.”  When  the  other  had  read  down  to  the 
words,  “In  fine,  above  all  angels  and  archangels,  and  all 
the  host  of  heaven,”  the  dying  woman  pressed  the  hand 
held  in  hers.  Then,  as  the  other  looked  up,  she  motioned 
to  her  to  continue,  and  just  as  the  last  words,  “above  all 
that  is  not  Thee,  my  God !  ”  she  repeated  thrice  audibly, 
wdiile  a  light  seemed  to  overspread  her  features,  “Thee, — 
Thee, — my  God, — my  God  !  ”  and  expired. 

II. 

DUTIES  TOWARD  SERVANTS. 

It  would  be  a  strange  inconsistency  if  a  truly  Christian 
mistress,  fearing  God  herself,  and  making  his  love  and  ser¬ 
vice  the  chief  purpose  of  her  life,  should  fail  to  be  toward 
her  servants  much  more  of  the  mother  than  the  mistress. 

Among  God’ s  people,  before  the  coming  of  Christ,  though 
the  servants  in  the  family  were  either  slaves  belonging  to 
the  master,  or  free  men  and  women  who  had  bound  them¬ 
selves  to  temporary  service,  the  heads  of  the  household 
were  obliged  not  only  to  treat  these  dependents  with  hu¬ 
manity,  but  to  secure  to  them  all  the  precious  benefits  of 
the  faith  and  hope  in  the  Redeemer.  Thus  the  true  religion 
formed  a  bond  of  brotherhood  between  the  inferiors  and 
the  superiors.  Under  Christianity  slavery  was  gradually 
done  away  with  by  the  very  force  of  the  doctrine  and  senti- 


302 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TREE  WOMANHOOD. 


ment  of  brotherhood  working  on  heart  and  mind  among  all 

classes. 

The  beantifnl  sentiment  of  Ecclesiasticus,  “If  thou  have 
a  faithful  servant,  let  him  be  to  thee  as  thy  own  soul :  treat 
him  as  a  brother,” — sounds  almost  like  some  gospel  pre¬ 
cept.  But  this  last  verse  in  the  chapter  is  preceded  by 
several  injunctions  or  practical  rules  concerning  stubborn  or 
vicious  servants,  that  a  slave-master  might  easily  pervert  to 
his  own  purposes. 

ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  FUGITIVE  SLAVE. 

Compare  with  this  the  divine  charity  which  shines  forth 
in  St.  Paul’s  Epistle  to  Philemon.  This  man,  a  citizen  of 
Colossse  in  Phrygia,  and  a  convert  to  Christianity,  had  a 
slave  called  Onesimus,  who  tied  from  his  master  to  Pome, 
after  having  wronged  him  in  some  serious  manner.  In  the 
great  city  the  fugitive  came  within  the  influence  of  St.  Paul, 
then  imprisoned,  but  left  a  certain  freedom  to  preach  the 
gospel  and  help  in  spreading  it  among  all  those  who  had 
recourse  to  him.  Onesimus  became  not  only  a  convert,  but 
a  most  zealous  and  efficient  assistant  to  the  great  apostle. 
For,  in  these  days,  the  fortunes  of  war  reduced  the  van¬ 
quished  to  bondage,  and  thus  men  of  the  noblest  birth  and 
the  highest  culture  were  brought  down  to  the  condition  of 
slaves.  Onesimus,  apparently,  was  anxious  or  willing  to 
repair  the  wrong  he  had  committed  toward  his  master ; 
at  any  rate,  he  consented  to  fulfill  the  prescriptions  of  the 
civil  law,  which  compelled  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves  to 
their  masters. 

But  in  the  case  of  Onesimus,  the  conversion  to  Christian¬ 
ity  of  both  master  and  slave  entirely  changed  the  sentiments 
with  which  each  regarded  the  other, — although  it  did  not 
do  away  formally  with  the  power  of  the  former  over  the 
latter.  So  the  aged  Paul,  from  his  prison,  sends  back  One¬ 
simus  to  Colossae,  intrusting  to  him  a  letter  or  epistle  for  the 
young  church  springing  up  in  that  city,  and  another  to 
Philemon  in  commendation  of  the  bearer  himself. 


WINNING  THE  HEARTS  OF  ONE’S  SERVANTS. 


303 


“  Paul,  a  prisoner  of  Christ  Jesus,  ...  to  Philemon 
cur  beloved  and  fellow-laborer.  .  .  .  Though  I  have 

much  confidence  in  Christ  Jesus  to  command  thee  that 
which  is  to  the  purpose  :  for  charity’ s  sake  I  rather  beseech, 
whereas  thou  art  such  an  one,  as  Paul  an  old  man,  and  now 
a  prisoner  also  of  Jesus  Christ :  I  beseech  thee  for  my  son, 
whom  I  have  begotten  in  my  bonds,  Onesimus.  .  .  .  Do 

thou  receive  him  as  my  own  bowels  (my  own  heart).  .  .  . 
Not  now  as  a  servant,  but  instead  of  a  servant,  a  most  dear 
brother,  especially  to  me.  ...  If  therefore  thou  count 
me  a  partner,  receive  him  as  myself.” 

THE  DOCTEINE  OF  UNIVERSAL  BROTHERHOOD  IN  CHRIST. 

This  was  a  language  never  heard  before.  The  sentiments 
it  expresses,  the  great  doctrines  of  universal  brotherhood 
and  a  common  calling  to  the  inheritance,  with  Christ,  of  an 
eternal  glory,  leavened  thenceforward  the  hearts  and  minds 
of  men,  and  changed  the  face  of  the  world.  In  our  day 
there  are  found  men  who  would  set  aside  this  divine  brother¬ 
hood  and  all  its  humanizing  influences,  and  bring  back  the 
reign  of  the  darkest  Pagan  materialism.  Christian  homes 
and  hearts  sanctified  by  all  the  charities  which  a  living  faith 
in  Christ  begets,  must  be  the  firm  bulwark  against  this 
impure  and  rising  tide. 

IMPERIOUS  NECESSITY  OF  WINNING  THE  HEARTS  OF  ONE’S 

SERVANTS. 

It  behooves  every  Christian  mistress  and  mother,  as  she 
loves  her  own  children,  and  labors  to  make  them  live  up  to 
the  sublime  duties  of  their  religion,  even  so  to  love  her  ser¬ 
vants  dependent  on  her  motherly  charity,  and  looking  to 
her,  under  God,  for  instruction,  edification,  care,  and  com¬ 
fort  in  health  and  sickness. 

Later,  in  a  separate  chapter,  we  shall  see  what  are  the 
special  duties  to  be  fulfilled  by  servants  themselves,  and 
the  special  excellence  to  which  they  can  attain.  Be  it  suffi- 


304 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


cient  in  this  place  to  hold  the  mirror  of  her  own  duty  up 
to  the  true  woman,  so  that  she  can  see  in  it  the  model  of  a 
perfect  mistress,  as  we  have  already  shown  her  the  image  of 
a  perfect  wife  and  mother. 

HOW  SERVANTS  SHOULD  BE  BOUND  TO  THEIR  MASTERS. 

“I  have  collected  certain  instructions,”  says  an  old  au¬ 
thor, — “and  composed  almost  an  art  of  friendship  between 
rich  and  powerful  men  and  persons  poor  and  of  low  condi¬ 
tion,  to  whom  has  been  apjxLied  the  odious  name  of  servi¬ 
tude.  What  domain  is  more  fertile  than  domestic  charity  ? 
Is  it  not  better  that  our  house  should  be  in  the  charge  of 
true  friends  of  good  will,  rather  than  in  that  of  men  who 
evince,  I  do  not  say  love,  but  not  even  the  shadow  of  love  % 
Such  servants  have  only  one  object — to  steal  and  get  rich 
as  soon  as  possible  ;  but  if  you  lift  them  up  into  the  sphere 
of  friendship,  of  free  and  kindly  regard,  what  immense 
utility  shall  we  not  derive  from  their  assistance  ?  For  then 
they  love  their  masters  tenderly,  spare  no  pains,  and  expose 
themselves  to  all  dangers  for  them.  This  friendship,  if  we 
do  not  trample  humanity  under  our  feet  by  our  pride,  .  .  . 
will  certainly  spring  up  of  itself  and  increase  ;  for  nothing 
is  more  natural  than  to  love  those  who  dwell  under  the  same 
roof  with  us  ;  and,  certes,  nothing  can  happen  more  advan¬ 
tageous  to  a  man  than  to  live  in  the  same  household  with 
another  man,  when  of  suitable  manners.”  * 

THE  GOLDEN  RULE. 

/ 

“  I  knew  a  lady,  who  now  lives  in  heaven,”  says  Luis  de 
Leon;  “  the  persons  who  served  her  never  left  her  without  be¬ 
ing  prized  the  more  for  having  lived  with  her.  It  happened 
once  that  she  was  obliged  to  dismiss  one  of  her  servants 
without  having  done  him  all  the  good  that  she  desired,  and 
I  often  heard  her  say,  that  she  was  disconsolate  at  the 
thought  of  a  person,  once  intrusted  to  her  by  God,  depart- 


*  Della  Casa,  “  Treatise  on  Duties.” 


AIM  HIGH  IN  PERFORMING  TOUR  DUTY. 


305 


ing  from  her  house  without  having  been  benefited  by  the 
stay.”  * 

Unquestionably  these  are  the  ideas  by  which  every  head 
of  a  household  ought  to  be  governed  in  her  relations  with 
her  servants.  They  are  “intrusted  by  God”  to  her  that 
she  may  do  them  all  the  good  she  can,  and  make  them 
in  every  way  as  good  as  she  can.  They  are  a  charge  com¬ 
mitted  to  her,  not  to  be  kept  in  the  ignorance  and  moral  de¬ 
ficiencies  with  which  they  came  to  her  service,  but  to  be  im¬ 
proved  in  every  way  not  merely  for  the  sole  motive  of  self- 
interest,  as  Della  Casa  suggests,  but  because  they  are  a 
trust  for  which  we  must  be  accountable  to  God. 

AIM  HIGH  IN  PERFORMING  YOUR  DUTY. 

We  know  by  our  sad  experience  that  we  seldom  succeed 
wThen  we  aim  high  in  hitting  the  mark  we  aim  at.  We 
fail  in  our  best  and  calmest  resolutions  to  do  exactly  as 
well  as  we  purposed  ;  indeed,  it  is  to  the  most  generous  a 
constant  source  of  regret  and  self-reproach  that  their  per¬ 
formances  fall  short  of  the  promises  made  to  their  own 
soul. 

In  the  performance  of  one’ s  duty  toward  one’ s  servants, 
then,  how  can  one  best  secure  a  high  degree  of  merit  and  a 
great  amount  of  good  done  to  them  ?  The  first  extract  we 
gave  exhorts  masters  and  mistresses  to  make  “  friends  ”  of 
their  servants  and  dependants, — because  “then  they  love 
their  masters  tenderly,  spare  no  pains,  and  expose  themselves 
to  all  dangers  for  them.”  This  attachment  being  based  on  a 
motive  of  self-interest,  may  not  be  either  very  lasting  or 
very  exalted.  There  are  servants  deeply  attached  to  vicious 
masters,  because  the  attachment  is  founded  on  community 
of  enjoyments,  pursuits,  and  vices.  We  shall  secure  a  more 
exalted,  permanent,  and  purer  friendship,  and  a  more  loyal 
and  generous  service,  by  following  the  practice  of  the  noble 
Spanish  lady  mentioned  by  Luis  de  Leon, — by  considering 
every  servant  who  enters  our  household  as  a  needy  brother 


20 


*  Quoted  by  Digby. 


306 


THE  MIRROR  GF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


sent  ns  by  the  Shepherd  of  souls, — that  we  may  receive 
the  stranger  as  we  wonld  Christ  himself,  that  we  may  guard 
that  soul,  and  respect  it,  as  we  would  the  Body  taken  down 
from  the  cross  and  given  over  to  our  care,  or  the  pierced 
Heart  taken  from  out  the  yawning  side.  This  is  the  model, 
— the  only  practical  rule  to  set  before  ourselves, — to  keep 
the  deposit  of  that  precious  soul  sent  to  us,  as  we  would 
keep  the  sacred  treasure  of  Christ’s  heart. 

CONSIDER  EACH  SERVANT’S  SOUL  AS  A  SACRED  DEPOSIT. 

What  would  you  think  good  enough  as  a  repository  for 
such  a  treasure  ?  What  gold  could  be  refined  enough  to 
inclose  it  ?  What  gems  so  rare  or  valuable  as  to  be  fit  to 
adorn  it  ? 

What  precautions  would  be  taken  to  prevent  profanation 
or  defilement  ?  But  let  us  apply  this  ideal  rule,  supplied  by 
the  charity  of  Paul  in  chains  for  Christ,  to  the  real  need 
of  your  servants. 

The  Spanish  lady  considered  that  every  servant  sent  to 
her  by  Providence  had  to  be  dealt  with  as  a  child  of  her 
own ; — loved  and  reverenced  as  a  thing  which  had  been 
saved  from  the  eternal  death  by  the  utmost  love  and  agony 
of  the  Sacred  Heart,  purchased  by  all  the  blood  it  contained. 
The  soul  of  each  was  in  her  eyes  therefore  of  equal  value  to 
the  infinite  price  it  cost,  and  to  be  cherished  accordingly. 
Wherefore  was  that  soul  thus  confided  to  her?  that  she 
might  merely  keep  it  from  evil,  from  sin  ?  That  surely  ; — 
but  not  that  alone.  She  was,  moreover,  instructed  by  her 
faith  to  do  all  the  good  in  her  power  to  that  soul,  and  to 
make  that  soul  as  good  as  she  could. 

Hence  ‘  £  she  was  disconsolate  at  the  thought  of  a  person 
once  intrusted  to  her  by  God  departing  from  her  house 
without  having  been  benefited  by  the  stay  therein.” 

There  is  no  Catholic  woman  but  will  immediatelv  take  in 
the  full  meaning  of  this  lesson.  It  is  a  magnificent  one  ;  and 
let  us  not  part  with  it  too  speedily.  Look  you,  when  a  bee 
on  a  summer  morning  lights  on  a  garden  filled  with  sweet 


TREA  TMENT  OF  SER  VANTS  IN  CA  THOLIC  CO  ENTRIES.  307 

flowers  and  untouched  by  a  single  sister-bee,  she  thinks  not 
of  returning  to  the  hive  until  she  has  taken  her  fill  of  honey. 
Nay,  she  will  go  back  again  and  again  to  that  privileged 
spot,  till  not  one  flower  is  left  that  has  not  been  rifled  of  its 
treasure. 

LOFTY  VIEWS  OF  DUTY  IN  CATHOLIC  SPAIN. 

Let  us  be  wise  after  this  fashion,  and  thus  draw  from 
these  pregnant  truths  of  our  holy  faith  all  the  honey  they 
contain.  No  nation  ever  surpassed  the  Spanish  in  the  lofty 
sentiments  which  they  conceived  of  Christian  duty.  The 
noble  poet,  who  is  the  Shakespeare  of  that  nation,  with 
more  than  Shakespeare’ s  elevation  and  purity,  and  none  of 
his  sad  blemishes,  makes  a  servant  say  to  his  ungrateful 
master  :  “  Consider  that  I  have  always  served  you  well,  and 
that  negligence  is  not  a  crime  with  a  Catholic  Christian.” 

And  why  was  negligence  a  crime  unknown  to  Spanish 
servants,  if  not  because  neglect  of  the  welfare  of  servants, — 
either  spiritual  or  temporal, — was  a  thing  unheard  of  among 
Spanish  masters  and  mistresses.  Elsewhere  *  we  have  seen 
with  what  respect  and  reverence  the  Spaniards  treat  the 
poor,  the  beggar,  and  the  sick.  We  must  be  prepared, 
therefore,  to  find  them  extending  to  their  household  ser¬ 
vants  and  dependants  the  same  feeling  of  honor  and  true 
friendship. 

HOW  SERVANTS  WERE  TREATED  IN  ALL  CATHOLIC  COUNTRIES. 

Nor  was  this  religious  sentiment  of  brotherhood  and 
equality  in  Christ  confined  to  the  Spanish  peninsula  ;  it 
reigned  throughout  all  Christian  nations.  In  every  princely 
and  noble  family  lived  a  chaplain,  whose  special  care  and 
duty  it  was  to  devote  himself  to  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the 
servants  and  dependants,  to  instruct  them  thoroughly  in 
the  Christian  doctrine,  and  to  afford  them  every  facility  and 


*  Chapter  VII.,  pp.  88,  89,  90. 


308 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


encouragement  for  the  reception  of  the  sacraments,  and  the 
advancement  in  holiness  of  life.  Nor  did  this  dispense  the 
lord  and  lady  from  seeing  to  it  in  person  that  the  chaplain 
did  his  duty,  and  that  their  household  was  one  in  which 
God,  before  and  above  all  things,  was  served  and  honored. 
The  Sundays  and  feasts  of  obligation  were  duly  sanctified 
by  all ;  and  in  more  than  one  country  the  law  of  the  Church 
and  that  of  the  State  enjoined,  that,  on  the  eve  of  these 
days,  servants  and  others  should  be  allowed  to  retire  early 
in  order  to  be  up  in  time  for  Mass  the  next  morning.  How 
many  Catholic  masters  and  mistresses  sin  grievously  in  this 
respect  in  our  day  and  country  ! 

MASTERS  AND  MISTRESSES  ANXIOUS  FOR  THE  PROGRESS  OF 

THEIR  SERVANTS  IN  HOLINESS. 

More  than  that,  in  these  ages  of  faith  of  which  modern 
ignorance  and  fanaticism  speak  so  sneeringly,  all  Christian 
masters  and  mistresses  were  anxious  that  their  entire  house¬ 
holds  should  have  the  very  same  advantages  for  instruction 
which  they  had  themselves.  St.  Paulinus,  Archbishop  of 
Aquileia,  thus  instructs  his  immediate  sovereign,  Henry, 
Duke  of  Friuli :  “  Entreat  all  who  are  in  your  house  to  do 
whatever  they  do  humbly  before  God  ;  for  whatever  a  man 
doeth  with  pride  can  never  please  God.  In  all  their  actions 
let  them  be  humble  ;  for  no  one  can  come  to  the  kingdom 
of  God  unless  by  humility.  All  labors,  prayers,  alms,  fasts, 
and  vigils,  if  performed  with  pride,  are  accounted  as  no¬ 
thing  before  God.  .  .  .  Prescribe  to  all  your  domestics, 

and  those  subject  to  you,  to  abstain  from  pride,  and  to  live 
temperately,  justly,  piously,  and  holily  before  God;  for 
Christ  shed  his  blood  not  alone  for  us  clergy,  but  for  the 
whole  human  race.  There  is  no  acceptation  of  persons  with 
God ;  for  the  celestial  palace  opens  its  doors  to  the  laity 
who  keep  the  divine  commandments,  as  well  as  the  clergy 
and  those  who  bear  the  monk’s  habit ;  for  we  are  all  one  in 
Christ.  .  .  .  Love  your  Head  with  your  whole  heart, 

and  the  members  of  that  Head.  How  can  the  hand  hate 


CHARITY  IN  THE  MISTRESS. 


309 


tlie  hand,  or  the  foot  the  foot  ?  All  the  members  ought  to 
grow  up  lovingly  together  into  the  perfect  man.* 

This  sentiment  of  Christian  equality  made  masters  and 
mistresses  in  the  highest  households  call  all  their  servants 
“  children,”  and  tlie  custom  still  survives  in  lands  where 
faith  and  piety  have  long  since  waned.  More  than  that, — 
it  was  held  wise  and  proper  to  make  both  sons  and  daugh¬ 
ters  mix  with  the  servants  in  the  performance  of  the  menial 
household  duties.  The  heroic  Bayard  relates  that  he*  had 
to  do  so  in  his  father’s  house;  and  Marina  de  Escobar 
says  that  her  mother,  although  having  a  numerous  retinue 
of  servants,  “used,  as  a  prudent  woman,  always  to  make 
her  daughters  apply  to  domestic  exercises,  along  with  the 
maids.” 

THE  CHARITY  OF  THE  MISTRESS  BEGETS  LOVE  IN  THE 

SERVANTS. 

Where  the  old  Catholic  spirit,  the  true  spirit  of  Christian 
charity,  reigns  in  a  household — thanks  to  a  pious  and  zeal¬ 
ous  mistress — servants  cannot  fail  to  become  attached  to 
their  masters,  to  consider  themselves  as  members  of  the 
family,  having  the  same  interests,  affections,  hopes,  and 
fears,  as  they  have  the  same  faith,  returning  love  for  love  in 
view  of  him  who  is  the  Elder  Brother  of  us  all.  Our  ances¬ 
tors  were  not  fond  of  changing  servants,  precisely  because 
the  servants  were  not  fond  of  changing  masters.  The  char¬ 
ity  which  bound  together  the  entire  household  was  utterly 
opposed  to  the  selfishness  of  our  times.  Our  grandmothers 
had  a  saying  which  we  would  heartily  commend  to  the 
meditation  of  their  daughters  and  granddaughters  :  “The 
herb  one  knows,  one  ought  to  tie  well  to  one’s  finger.” 

An  author  of  the  early  part  of  the  last  century  cites,  for 
the  instruction  of  after-ages,  an  example  of  this  mutual  at¬ 
tachment  of  servants  and  masters.  “  What  a  charm,”  says 
he,  “  when  masters  and  servants  grow  old  together  !  What 
a  Joy  to  old  age,  when  it  is  served  by  ancient  domestics, 


*  Quoted  by  Digby. 


310 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


accustomed  to  its  mode  of  life !  There  are  families  thus 
favored.  I  have  known  no  house  happier  in  this  respect 
than  that  of  the  great  Seguier,  Chancellor  of  France.  All 
his  servants  had  grown  old  with  him  ;  so  that  if  one  did  not 
always  see  the  same  faces,  one  saw  always  the  same  persons. 
As  their  constitutions  were  not  so  strong  as  his  own,  most 
of  them  broke  down  on  the  way  ;  and  he  saw  them  perish 
before  himself,  leaving  but  little  behind  them,  though  after 
forty  years  service  in  the  house  of  a  chancellor.  All  this 
must  be  regarded  as  a  part  of  the  felicity  of  this  great  man, 
adding  to  the  sweetness  of  his  old  age.”  * 

THE  TIE  OF  CHAEITY  LOOSENED  IN  MODEEN  SOCIETY. 

Certain  it  is,  that  the  spectacle  offered  in  any  of  our  cities, 
when,  in  answer  to  an  advertisement  for  a  servant,  hundreds 
of  ill-clad,  half-starved,  and  most  uncomely-looking  crea¬ 
tures  besiege  the  door  of  the  advertiser,  and  crowd  the 
street  and  the  sidewalk, — was  a  thing  unseen  and  unheard 
of  a  century  ago,  even  in  European  countries,  far  less  in  this 
New  World  of  ours.  It  is  a  sight  which  might  have  been 
witnessed  near  the  great  marble  palace  of  one  of  our  prince 
merchants  twenty-four  hours  before  this  was  written  ;  and 
it  is  a  sad  commentary  on  the  Christian  charity  which  is  sup¬ 
posed  to  govern  the  relations  of  masters  and  servants  in  this 
land  of  fraternity  and  equality. 

How  is  this  gulf,  which  selfishness  and  uncharitableness 
have  opened  between  the  wealthy  and  the  poor, — between 
the  class  which  counts  masters  and  mistresses,  and  the 
poor  who  have  to  serve  and  to  work,  to  be  housed  and  fed 
and  clothed, — this  gulf  which  unbelief  and  radicalism  are 
deepening  and  widening  with  all  their  splendid  theories 
about  humanity  and  fraternity  and  equality, — how  is  this 
gulf  to  be  filled  up  or  bridged  over  ?  By  the  hearts  of  true 
Christian  women  ! 


*  Le  Baron  de  Prelie,  Considerations  sur  les  avantages  de  la  Vieillesse  dans  la 
Vie  Chretienne ,  p.  314.  Quoted  by  Digby. 


AN  ILLUSTRATION  OF  TRUE  WOMENS  INFLUENCE.  31 1 


HOW  KIND  AND  CHAEITABLE  MISTEESSES  CAN  PEEYENT 

SOCIALISM. 

Your  influence,  your  action  within  your  homes  and  out¬ 
side, — on  your  servants,  on  the  poor  and  sick,  on  your  own 
daughters, — on  all  minds  and  hearts  that  come  within  reach 
of  your  voice,  within  the  magnetic  circle  of  your  goodly 
deeds, — all  this  will  help  to  heal  the  wounded  hearts  into 
which  the  hatred  of  the  rich,  of  the  Church,  of  religion,  of 
God  himself,  is  every  day  sinking  deeper. 

Say  not  what  can  one  woman  do, — but  say  what  could 
not  all  true  women  do,  if  each  within  her  home  weie  to  kin¬ 
dle  in  her  own  heart  the  fire  which  Christ  came  down  on 
earth  to  kindle  ?  Fire  like  that  cannot  be  kept  hidden  with¬ 
in  the  vessel  that  contains  it.  God  intended  it  to  burst 
forth  and  warm  and  inflame  all  hearts  that  come  near  it. 
The  days  are  coming, — nay,  they  are  at  hand,  when  the 
very  men  in  whose  souls  that  dreadful  hatred  we  have  just 
mentioned  will  be  the  only  religion.  Ministers  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  will  have  no  influence  over  these  mortally  sick 
souls.  Their  voice  will  not  be  listened  to,  their  authority 
will  be  derided,  and  their  interference  repelled  like  an  insult 
or  a  crime.  But  you,  women,  you,  mothers — will  still  be 
God’s  instruments  for  staying  this  dreadful  plague,  and 
restoring  to  Christ  and  to  charity  all  their  influence.  This 
is  the  mission  in  which  the  Church  will  employ  you. 

AN  ILLUSTEATION  OF  TEUE  WOMEN’S  INFLUENCE. 

Say  not,  then,  what  can  women  do  %  Travelers  over  our 
southern  seas  tell  us  of  the  manner  in  which  a  tiny  little 
insect,  called  the  coral  insect,  prevents  the  last  traces  of 
submerged  continents  from  disappearing  forever  beneath 
the  waves.  These  worlds,  sunk  beneath  the  ocean  surface 
long,  long  ages  ago,  left  visible  here  and  there  only  a  few  of 
the  crests  of  their  highest  mountains,  and  by  degrees  even 
these  were  worn  down  by  wind  and  rain  and  the  ceaseless 


312 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


lashing  of  the  waves.  Jnst  when  the  last  summits  had 
passed  out  of  sight,  God  sent  these  armies  of  tiny  creatures 
to  labor  together  and  build  in  the  shallow  waters  which 
covered  the  sunken  crests  these  beautiful  structures  called 
corals,  with  their  marvelous  forms  and  colors  ;  generation 
after  generation  of  these  little  toilers  of  the  deep  succeeded 
in  doing  what  all  the  might  and  ingenuity  of  the  race  of 
man  could  never  compass, — they  erected  structures  so  solid 
that  the  rage  of  the  mightiest  storm  could  neither  destroy 
nor  shake  them.  Higher  and  higher  they  rose,  till  the  tide 
left  them  bare,  and  other  agencies  then  came  to  aid  in  mak¬ 
ing  an  island.  Elsewhere  existing  islands  are  preserved 
from  the  destroying  action  of  the  ocean  by  these  same  little 
workers,  which  build  their  barriers  or  walls  of  coral  all 
round  to  break  the  force  of  the  waves,  and  save  the  islands 
with  their  inhabitants  and  lovely  growth  of  vegetation. 

If  God  accords  such  marvelous  results  to  the  united  ac¬ 
tion  of  insects  invisible  almost  to  the  naked  eye,  what 
blessings  will  he  not  bestow  on  mothers  laboring  within 
their  homes  to  make  husbands,  children,  servants, — ay, 
and  the  neighbors  all  around, — true  children  of  the  living 
God? 

Do  all  the  good  you  can  to  the  souls  God  gives  you  to 
work  upon :  if  you  are  a  faithful  laborer,  He  will  surely 
give  you  more, — and  this  number  will  go  on  increasing 
in  proportion  to  your  goodness  and  the  charity  burning 
within. 


PRACTICAL  RULES. 

In  this  spirit  you  have  only  to  see  what  are  the  simple 
rules  taught  by  experience  and  which  are  to  guide  you  in 
your  conduct  toward  your  servants.  *  As  in  the  case  of  your 
children,  so  here  impress  every  one  in  your  service  with  the 
conviction  that  his  or  her  single  soul  is  as  dear  to  you,  as  if 
none  other  claimed  your  interest  and  your  care.  This  per¬ 
sonal  interest  in  the  welfare,  the  comfort,  the  progress  of 
every  individual  in  the  household,  works  like  a  mighty 
spell.  Nor,  by  kindly  inquiring  into  the  concerns  of  each, 


LET  YOUR  SERVANTS  SEEK  YOUR  ADVICE. 


313 


will  their  respect  for  yon  be  diminished,  if  you  are  careful 
to  be  kind  without  being  familiar.  Servants  like  their  mas¬ 
ters  to  keep  a  proper  distance.  We  have  known  the  rudest, 
the  most  impertinent,  and  ungovernable,  to  be  tamed  and 
made  respectful  and  well-mannered  by  this  prudent  mixture 
of  kind  motherly  interest  and  reserve.  It  is  necessary  always 
to  address  one’s  servants  with  a  simplicity  which  is  far  re¬ 
moved  from  a  proud,  imperious  tone,  but  implies  a  certain 
degree  of  regard  for  them  ;  and  still  more  necessary  that 
they  should  never  be  permitted  to  address  their  master 
or  mistress,  or  any  member  of  the  family,  otherwise  than 
respectfully. 

Persons  really  well  bred  will  never  permit  themselves 
either  rudeness,  haughtiness,  or  familiarity  toward  their  de¬ 
pendants  ;  and  it  very  rarely  happens  that  these  show  them¬ 
selves  disposed  to  be  otherwise  than  respectful  toward  such 
masters. 

We  repeat  it,  then,  take  a  real  interest  in  each  one  of 
your  servants. 

EKCOUEAGE  THEM  TO  SEEK  YOUE  ADVICE  IK  DIFFICULTIES. 

Remember  how  little  of  present  joy  or  happiness  such 
persons  have  outside  of  what  your  home  affords  them. 
They  have  had,  very  many  of  them,  a  hard  lot  in  the  past ; 
their  stay  with  you  may  decide  of  their  whole  future  ;  they 
are  all  gifted  with  some  share  of  affection,  some  of  them, 
at  least,  with  warm  and  deep  affections  ;  among  these  hearts 
there  may  be  one  that  is  sorely  bruised,  and  which  your 
motherly  hand  can  soothe  and  heal.  Your  own  womanly 
tact  will  not  be  slow  in  discovering  such  as  need  especial 
kindness,  nay,  very  great  delicacy  of  treatment.  Let  them 
be  encouraged  to  come  to  you  ;  and  let  them  feel  that  their 
•secret,  whatever  it  be,  is  safe  with  you. 

It  not  unfrequently  happens  that  a  certain  moodiness  or 
irritability  which  you  perceive  in  servants,  otherwise  excel¬ 
lent,  arises  from  concealed  grief.  There  may  be  a  fearful 
struggle  going  on  against  despair  beneath  that  vail  of  sad- 


314 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


ness  or  that  cloud  of  ill-temper.  A  single  kind  word  from 
you, — a  word  from  your  heart, — will  make  these  clouds  dis¬ 
solve  in  tears  of  sweet  relief,  and  the  whole  soul  will  be  laid 
bare  before  you. 

DO  NOT  JUDGE  THEM  HASTILY. 

*. 

Even  where  there  is  neglect  of  duty,  be  not  hasty  in  con¬ 
demning  or  punishing.  You  will, — if  still  young, — find  out 
before  you  die,  that  the  harshest  and  most  pitiless  of  mis* 
tresses,  the  quickest  to  think  ill  of  the  delinquent,  to  judge 
severely,  and  punish  without  mercy, — is  the  woman  who  is 
most  remiss  in  the  fulfillment  of  her  own  sacred  duties, 
and  who  stands  most  in  need  of  the  mercy  of  God  and 
man. 

When  complaints  are  made,  do  not  lend  a  willing  ear,  so 
as  to  encourage  informers,  nor  hasten  to  act  upon  the  infor¬ 
mation.  Let  all  under  you  know  that  you  never  condemn 
before  inquiring  carefully,  and  that  your  inquiry  is  always 
conducted  without  noise  or  partiality. 

SURROUND  YOUR  SERVANTS  WITH  OBJECTS  WHICH  CAN 

ELEVATE  THEM. 

The  feeling  of  inferiority  and  dependence,  and  the  nature 
of  the  services  they  render,  are,  in  themselves,  sufficient  to 
humble  persons  who  may  be  naturally  proud,  high-minded, 
or  sensitive.  Do  not  debase  or  degrade  your  servants  still 
further  by  allotting  them  rooms  to  work  and  sleep  in  where 
all  is  discomfort  and  meanness.  Our  forefathers  were  wont, 
when  the  beggar  asked  for  a  night’ s  lodging,  to  give  him,  in 
the  name  of  Christ,  a  place  at  the  common  board,  a  seat 
near  the  warm  hearth,  and  a  clean  and  comfortable  bed, — 
all  for  His  dear  sake  who  for  us  “  came  unto  his  own,  and 
his  own  received  him  not.” 

We  have  just  seen  that  the  servant  in  the  Christian  house¬ 
hold  is  to  be  treated  as  a  something  holy  and  precious ; — do 
not,  then,  while  you  give  warmth  and  comfort  to  the  passing 


DO  NOT  OVERBURDEN  THEM  WITH  WORK. 


315 


beggar,  and  while  you  lavish  luxury  and  all  honor  on  a 
guest, — leave  the  servant  who  labors  for  your  interest  and 
who  is  one  of  your  family,  to  what  is  as  inhospitable  as  the 
cavern  of  Bethlehem, — as  cold  and  as  comfortless  and  as 
unclean  almost.  For  there  are  mistresses  who  care  not  how 
wretchedly  furnished  may  be  the  miserable  garret  or  cellar 
in  which  their  servants  pass  the  night,  after  a  hard  day’s 
toil. 

See  you  not  that  the  very  necessity  of  accepting  such  a 
resting-place  is  felt  as  a  degradation?  And  every  thing 
which  degrades  is  remembered  as  an  unpardonable  wrong. 
Let  every  thing  in  their  sleeping  and  working  rooms  tend 
to  elevate  them  ;  let  there  be  both  cleanliness  and  comfort ; 
and  let  the  walls  be  ornamented  with  such  pictures  and 
other  simple  decorations  as  may  lift  mind  and  heart  above 
the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  street. 

Insist  on  it  that  their  food  shall  be  wholesome  and  abun¬ 
dant-  and  that  every  thing  about  the  meal  shall  bespeak  a 
motherly  care  for  their  health. 

DO  NOT  OVERBURDEN  THEM  WITH  WORK. 

• 

Just  as  persons  who  have  no  conscience  are  harsh  and 
merciless  in  dealing  with  the  weaknesses  and  faults  of 
others,  even  so  do  persons  who  have  never  known  what  it  is 
to  work  hard,  or  work  at  all,  show  themselves  pitiless  or  most 
unreasonable  in  the  amount  of  labor  they  expect  and  exact 
from  their  servants.  There  are,  unhappily,  but  too  many 
masters  and  mistresses  in  all  large  communities,  who  have 
more  than  one  trait  of  resemblance  to  Sampson  and  Sarah 
Brass.  Such  abominable  meanness  and  hard-heartedness 
are  not,  however,  consistent  with  any  one  Christian  virtue 
in  man  or  woman.  Still  there  is  in  many  households  a 
carelessness  and  callousness  as  to  the  hardships,  the  diet, 
and  comfort  of  servants,  that  result  in  like  suffering  to  these, 
and  create  the  same  bitter  hatred  in  the  sufferers,  and  call 
down  from  a  just  God  the  same  inevitable  retribution. 

Where  servants  are  loved  and  cared  for,  they  work  low 


316 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


ingly  and  conscientiously  for  their  masters,  and  repay  with 
ample  interest  the  generosity  shown  by  these  in  providing 
for  the  health  and  comfort  of  their  dependants. 

IN  SICKNESS  CAKE  FOR  THEM  TENDERLY. 

Do  not  send  them  out  of  the  house  when  they  are  ill, 
unless  the  disease  be  a  contagious  one,  and  you  have  near 
at  hand  an  hospital  in  which  they  are  sure  to  be  well  cared 
for. 

When  the  sickness  has  been  contracted  in  serving  you 
faithfully,  this  care  on  your  j)art  is  simply  an  act  of  justice. 
In  every  case  it  is  a  duty  imposed  by  charity  ;  and  where  the 
soul  of  the  sufferer  needs  more  tender  nursing  than  even  the 
body,  it  is  far  more  urgent  that  you  should  not  give  over  to 
others  the  duty  God  wishes  you  to  fulfill  in  person. 

During  many  years  of  ministration  to  the  sick  we  have 
had  occasion  to  witness  the  unsparing  devotion  of  many 
mistresses  to  their  sick  servants.  One  instance,  that  of  a 
generous  Protestant  lady,  did  not  fall  under  our  own  ob¬ 
servation,  but  was  related  to  us  by  an  eye-witness.  She 
was  the  most  distinguished  personage  in  her  native  city, 
and  her  example  may  serve  as  an  exhortation  to  many  tepid 
and  remiss  Catholics. 

One  of  her  servants  fell  ill  of  a  most  malignant  fever ; 
the  nature  of  the  disease  and  the  imminent  danger  to  her 
large  family  were  clearly  pointed  out  by  the  physician. 
The  lady,  however,  had  no  thought  of  sending  the  poor 
patient  away  ;  but  made  an  hospital  of  one-half  of  her  large 
mansion,  isolating  it  as  far  as  she  could  from  the  rest  of  the 
household,  and  shut  herself  up  with  the  sufferer,  an  Irish 
Catholic  girl.  She  would  permit  no  one  but  the  physician 
and  the  priest  to  enter,  all  that  was  needful  to  herself  and 
her  patient  being  left  outside  the  apartment  adjoining  the 
sick-room.  Night  and  day  the  courageous  woman  watched 
over  her  charge  ;  but  it  was  all  in  vain.  The  terrible  fever 
claimed  its  victim. 

The  generous  mistress  bestowed  on  the  dead  the  same 


KNOW  HOW  TO  PRAISE  YOUR  SERVANTS.  317 

loving  care  she  had  lavished  on  the  living.  She  dressed 
the  corpse  in  her  own  raiment,  gave  orders  to  have  every 
thing  done  as  if  the  deceased  were  one  of  her  daughters, 
had  the  body  in  its  beautiful  rosewood  casket  laid  out  in 
her  best  parlor,  and  invited  all  the  friends  and  co-religion¬ 
ists  of  the  dead  girl  to  pay  their  respects  to  her  remains. 
The  funeral  was  a  touching  demonstration,  attesting  by  the 
numbers  of  those  present  and  by  their  quality  that  all  ap¬ 
preciated  this  noble  example  of  Christian  charity. 

Her  daughters  and  granddaughters  inherited  together 
with  this  self-sacrificing  spirit  their  parent’s  claim  to  a  still 
higher  grace. 

We  have  quoted  in  the  first  part  of  this  chapter  the  beau¬ 
tiful  charity  of  two  sisters  to  the  woman  wh(5  had  wronged 
them  so  fearfully ;  and  elsewhere  *  we  glanced  rapidly  at 
the  death-bed  of  a  young  martyr  of  charity.  We  have  seen, 
in  families  blessed  with  parents  who  deemed  the  tender 
care  of  sick  servants  an  ordinary  but  most  sacred  duty, 
what  mother  and  childen  can  do  to  make  a  sick-room  de¬ 
lightful.  There  was  no  thought  of  expense,  or  fatigue,  or 
fastidiousness.  The  best  physicians  in  the  city  were  in 
attendance,  the  most  costly  articles  from  the  druggist,  the 
grocer,  or  the  market, — the  most  generous  wines  when 
needed,  and  what  was  more  than  all  that,  a  love  and  untiring 
care,  inspired  by  true  religion,  was  lavished  on  the  patient 
even  though  he  or  she  had  only  been  a  few  days  in  the 
family. 

Could  it  be  a  matter  of  surprise  that  servants  living  in 
such  a  house  never  could  speak  of  their  master  or  mistress 
but  with  tears  of  gratitude  and  expressions  of  heartfelt 
veneration  % 

KNOW  HOW  TO  PRAISE  YOUR  SERVANTS. 

This  is  only  the  application  to  your  dependants  of  the 
rule  given  with  respect  to  your  husband  and  your  children. 
It  is  a  serious  defect  in  a  mistress  not  to  know  when  and 


318 


TEE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


where  and  how  to  praise  her  servants.  Praise,  however,  is 
a  sweet  reward,  and  most  coveted,  too,  by  those  who  labor 
conscientiously, — a  reward  often  more  prized  by  affectionate 
and  generous  natures  than  the  miserable  compensation  called 
wages  ;  and  it  is  a  most  powerful  stimulant  to  the  sluggish, 
the  careless,  and  even  the  perverse.  What  transformations 
have  we  not  seen  in  school-room  and  kitchen,  and  work¬ 
shop  and  field,  effected  in  natures  hitherto  rebellious  to  all 
stimulants,  by  the  gentle  words  of  praise  bestowed  by  a 
wise  master  or  a  kind  mistress  ! 

We  once  more  remind  you  that  the  judicious  and  generous 
bestowal  of  praise  is  a  most  beneficial  and  meritorious  alms¬ 
giving.  It  is  more  than  gold  or  silver  to  the  receiver,  and  it 
never  impoverishes  the  giver.  Do  not  stint  those  who  thirst 
for  it.  It  will  be  more  welcome  to  many  a  famished  heart 
than  a  draught  from  the  cool  spring  to  foot-sore  and  faint¬ 
ing  wayfarer.  It  will  inspire  good  resolutions  and  give 
strength  to  execute  them.  It  will  be  like  the  first  steps  of 
that  divine  ladder  which  the  Patriarch  saw  reaching  from 
earth  to  heaven ;  your  kind  words  will  raise  the  weak  soul 
up  one  step,  or  two  or  three, — thereby  showing  it  that  the 
ascent  to  higher  goodness  and  virtue  is  not  only  possible 
but  sweet.  God’s  angels  then  will  do  the  rest ;  and  the  God 
of  Angels  from  on  high  will  look  down  and  bless  you  for 
the  help  you  have  given  to  the  faint-hearted. 

And  so  we  have  been  teaching  you  to  be  the  teacher,  the 
dispenser,  as  well  as  the  pattern  of  goodness.  May  those 
who  know  you,  long  years  hence,  say  of  you  as  they  recall 
all  your  gracious  words  and  deeds  ! 

“  For  thou  art  still  the  poor  man’s  stay, 

The  poor  man’s  heart,  the  poor  man’s  hand  ; 

And  all  the  oppress’d  who  have  no  strength, 

Have  thine  at  their  command.” 

If  we  love  the  poor,  and  give  them  our  heart  and  our  life, 
shall  we  not  have,  in  our  turn,  their  strength  at  our  com¬ 
mand  in  the  hour  of  our  direst  need  ?  Let  one  last  example, 
quoted  by  the  illustrious  Count  Mole  in  a  memorable  dis- 


FIDELITY  OF  CATHOLIC  SERVANTS . 


319 


course  before  the  French  Academy,  serve  as  an  encourage¬ 
ment  to  all  good  mistresses,  and  a  model  to  all  trne-hearted 
servants. 

Catherine  Naville,  a  peasant  girl,  entered  the  family  of 
Madame  de  Letan,  in  1808,  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  “  Find¬ 
ing  that  the  family  was  sinking  into  distress,  the  young 
girl  devoted  herself  to  assist  it ;  became  the  nurse  of  her  sick 
mistress,  who  died  in  her  arms  ;  the  nurse  of  the  widower, 
wTho  then  fell  into  a  state  of  debility,  and  who,  unable  to 
pay  her  any  wages,  received  even  his  nourishment  from  the 
fruit  of  her  former  savings ;  after  his  death,  the  guardian 
of  their  orphan  girl  till  her  marriage. 

“  Then,  on  distress  visiting  the  former  home,  she  returned 
to  her  devoted  services,  giving  up  all  claim  to  her  arrear  of 
wages,  refusing  to  accept  service  in  a  house  where  she  was 
basely  offered  20,000  francs  ($4,000)  if  she  would  leave  her 
unfortunate  master  and  mistress  ;  then,  on  their  falling  sick, 
she  watched  them  through  a  long  malady,  and  closed  their 
eyes  when  they  expired.  After  this  she  transferred  her 
devotion  to  their  helpless  orphan  daughter,  whose  educa¬ 
tion  she  is  at  this  moment  (1842)  carrying  on,  at  the  age  of 
fifty-two  years,  which  have  been  thus  spent  in  assisting  an 
unfortunate  family,  with  whom  she  had  first  become  ac¬ 
quainted  by  accidentally  entering  their  service.” 

“We  can  judge” — says  Digby — “from  such  narratives 
how  well  the  old  poet  painted  from  living  manners,  when 
in  the  Miracle  de  Notre  Dame  de  Saint  Jehan  le  Paulu ,  he 
represents  the  hostess  saying  of  her  maid-servant :  ‘  If  I 
and  my  husband  should  die  on  our  pilgrimage,  this  sweet 
creature  has,  I  know,  such  courage,  that  she  will  not  keep 
all  our  money  to  herself,  but  will  give  alms  for  us  also.’  ”  * 

May  the  number  of  such  maids  and  such  mistresses  in¬ 
crease  amongst  us  through  the  light  of  your  examples  ! 


*  Compitum,  b.  iii.,  c.  vii. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


OBSTACLES  TO  THE  EIGHT  GOVEKNMENT  OF  THE  HOME. 

Where  Faith  has  stamped  its  character  on  the  maiden’s  heart,  .  .  . 

man  is  reminded  of  the  graces  of  her  whom  he  delights  to  serve,  woman’s  di¬ 
vine  air  and  her  countenance,  her  words  and  her  sweet  smile,  can  so  separate 
him  from  all  evil  influences,  that  no  obstacles  on  the  road  to  truth  will  be  able 
to  detain  his  feet  from  pressing  forward  to  embrace  it  ; — and  then  hand  in  hand 
he  is  led  to  his  second  Home,  where  Love  and  Truth  made  one  with  Love,  will 
remain  with  him  thenceforth  forever. — Kenelm  Digby. 

Whence  I  more  carefully  my  answer  frame. 

That  he  who  weeps  on  yonder  bank  may  feel 

A  punishment  assorted  to  his  shame. 

•  •  •  •  • 

Through  the  bounty  of  celestial  graces 

•  •  •  •  • 

So  gifted  in  his  early  life  was  he, 

Each  virtuous  germ  implanted  in  him,  would 
Have  flourished  in  a  marvelous  degree  : 

But  soil  untilled  and  sown  with  noxious  seed. 

The  more  with  native  vigor  ’tis  endued 
The  more  malignant  yields  the  noxious  weed. 

Long  time  my  look  sustained  him  : — to  his  sight 
The  luster  of  my  youthful  eyes  displaying, 

I  led  him  with  me  in  the  path  of  right. 

Scarce  had  I  reached  life’s  second  state,  when  he 
Betook  himself  to  others — rashly  straying 
From  better  guidance  and  forgetting  me. 

•  •  •  •  • 

His  steps  he  turned  into  an  erring  way. 

Pursuing  false  appearances  of  good. 

Which  promise  fair,  but  ever  lead  astray. 

Nor  inspirations  asked  for  him  availed, 

By  which  in  dreams  I  fain  would  him  recall  : 

Such  slight  regard  he  paid  them  : — wholly  failed 
The  means  I  often  used  (so  low  he  fell) 

To  insure  his  safety  and  redeem  his  fall, 

Save  leading  him  throughout  the  rounds  of  Hell. 

Wright's  Dante,  Purgatory ,  canto  xxx. 

320 


TEE  IDEAL  HOME. 


321 


THE  IDEAL  HOME. 

When  wife  and  husband  are  what  God  wills  them  to  be, 
one  mind  and  one  heart,  having  but  one  purpose  in  life^to 
be  devoted  to  each  other,  walking  hand  in  hand  in  the  di¬ 
vine  presence,  seeking  to  know  the  divine  will  clearly  in 
all  things,  and  yearning  to  accomplish  it  perfectly — then 
their  home  cannot  fail  to  be  an  ideal  or  perfect  home,  and 
their  united  work  in  life  a  perfect  work ;  because  it  is  as 
much  God’s  work  as  their  own. 

In  such  a  home, — when  all  the  ordinances  left  by  Christ 
to  his  Church  have  sanctified  it  as  well  as  the  hearts  of  its 
master  and  mistress, — the  wife  is  most  truly  the  embodi¬ 
ment  of  all  natural  and  supernatural  excellence  designed  to 
keep  her  companion  faithful  to  God  and  the  Truth.*  We 
again  recall  the  attention  of  all  mothers  to  the  exceeding 
care  and  reverence  with  which  they  should  prepare  their 
sons  and  daughters  for  the  reception  of  the  (to  them)  all- 
important  sacrament  of  matrimony.  In  the  world-wide 
warfare  made  at  present  on  the  Church  and  her  most  sa¬ 
cred  institutions,  not  the  least  mischief  is  done  by  making 
of  marriage  a  mere  civil  contract  and  lay  ceremony.  As 
we  believe  firmly  in  the  perpetual  union  of  Christ  with  his 
spouse  the  Church,  so  let  us  be  faithful  and  fervent  in  pro¬ 
fiting  by  these  divine  ordinances  designed  to  hallow  our 
homes,  our  hearts,  our  lives. 

The  conception  of  the  great  Florentine  poet,  where  his 
political  and  personal  passions  do  not  cloud  his  judgment, 
embitter  his  heart  and  poison  his  pen, — is  that  of  Religion 
(or  Revealed  Truth),  under  the  form  of  perfect  womanly 
grace  and  supernatural  virtue,  saving  man  from  himself  in 
youth,  and  guiding  him  step  by  step  to  the  highest  excel¬ 
lence  and  felicity.  The  Catholic  religion, — in  his  mind, — 

*  Truth  is  defined  by  De  Bonald  as  “the  knowledge  of  beings  and  tbeir  re¬ 
lations.”  This  is  truth  in  our  mind  ;  but  truth  in  our  life,  or  truth  in  action. 
Would  be  the  fulfillment  of  all  the  duties  imposed  on  us  toward  all  beings — God, 
ourselves,  and  the  neighbor. 

21 


322 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


is  the  true  Beatrice  (Latin,  Beatrix ,  “bestowerof  bliss”), 
the  guide,  the  enlightener,  the  loving,  devoted  friend  and 
companion,  who  never  quits  the  side  of  the  faithful  man. till 
she  has  led  him  to  that  “second  home”  on  high,  where 
God,  who  is  both  Love  and  Truth,  takes  the  pilgrim  to  his 
own  bosom, — the  only  home  worthy  of  the  children  of 
God. 

In  treating  *  of  the  qualities  and  virtues  of  a  true  wife, 
we  did  little  more  than  point  briefly  to  the  fact  of  so  many 
husbands  being  saved  from  ruin,  temporal  and  eternal,  by 
her  agency  who  is  the  angel  of  the  home.  Presently  we 
shall  see  how  hard  it  is  to  achieve  the  redemption  from  invet¬ 
erate  vice  of  a  soul  so  dear.  But  there  stands  the  mighty 
lesson  in  all  its  divine  meaning, — that  just  as  Mary  the 
mother  of  the  New  Life  gave  the  Saviour  and  salvation  to 
the  world,  just  as  the  Church,  the  spouse  of  Christ,  ever¬ 
more  performs  the  divine  office  of  motherhood  here  below 
toward  the  nations, — even  so  true  woman  in  every  home  is 
the  saviour  and  sanctifier  of  man. 

Hence  the  mighty  import  of  the  duties  assumed  by  the 
teaching  orders  of  women  in  the  modern  world.  Their 
schools  are  not  merely  a  nursery  from  which  their  own 
numbers  are  recruited,  but  they  are  the  nursery  of  the  true 
Christian  mothers  who  are  to  rear  the  priests  as  well  as  the 
citizens  of  the  future. 

Where  husband  and  wife  are  united  by  the  deepest  of  all 
natural  affections — deepened  still  more,  purified  and  inten¬ 
sified  by  the  great  gift  of  the  special  sacramental  grace — 
they  set  before  themselves,  like  Christ  and  his  Church,  one 
mighty  work  to  do,  to  make  their  home  a  paradise  and 
their  children  saints.  And  when  we  say  “  saints  ”  we  mean 
true  men  and  true  women, — faithful,  perfect,  admirable  in 
every  possible  relation  of  life. 

Let  every  one  of  you,  wives  and  mothers,  who  read  these 
lines,  pause  here  and  say,  whether  or  not  she  has  seen  such 
homes  among  the  poorest  day-laborers,  among  tradesmen 


*  Chapter  VI.,  pp.  65-73. 


THE  IDEAL  nOME  AN  HEREDITARY  HOME. 


323 


and  merchants,  among  the  wealthy  and  the  nobly  born? 
Where  there  is  living  faith  in  the  twin  souls  knit  together 
by  the  sacrament,  and  that  most  blessed  union  of  minds 
and  hearts  and  wills, — even  poverty  is  sweet  and  hard  toil 
is  welcome,  and  husband  and  wife  find  in  each  other  every 
day  that  dawns  on  them  new  qualities  which  delight  and 
new  virtues  to  increase  their  mutual  love  :  each  is  to  the 
other  a  continual  exhortation  to  trust  in  God,  to  piety  and 
uprightness,  to  the  patience  and  energy  which  bear  with 
unavoidable  ills  and  aim  at  the  possession  of  true  good. 
There  is  happiness  with  a  dry  loaf,  a  warm  fire,  and  the  love 
which  enables  each  to  be  all  in  all  to  the  other  ;  and  there 
is  wealth  above  all  price  in  the  contentment  based  on  this 
mutual  tenderness  and  on  the  all-sufficiency  of  the  devoted 
husband  to  the  wife,  and  of  the  devoted  wife  to  her  hus¬ 
band. 

The  home  of  the  poorest  man  where  such  love  is,  and  such 
goodness  is  known  to  all  around,  is  most  truly  like  a  bright 
light  in  a  dark  place. 

But  where  this  union  of  hearts  exists  in  the  home  of  the 
wealthy  and  the  great,  the  life-labor  of  husband  and  wife 
can  be  productive  of  incalculable  good.  Such  people,  with 
their  ample  means,  their  position,  and  their  influence  are, 
in  truth,  God’s  stewards  in  high  places,  with  an  arduous 
mission  before  them ;  but  who  can  describe  the  reward  kept 
in  store  for  their  fidelity  ? 

AIM  AT  MAKING  THE  IDEAL  HOME  AN  HEREDITARY  HOME. 

This  is  the  last  suggestion  which  we  make  to  those  who 
have  succeeded  in  rising  to  affluence.  In  the  days  of  our 
forefathers  it  was  the  ambition  of  every  high-souled  man, 
whether  born  in  poverty  or  in  a  palace,  to  create  a  home 
for  himself  and  his  children  after  him,  or  to  preserve  and 
adorn  the  home  of  his  parents. 

To  every  father  and  mother  whom  our  voice  can  reach, 
we  say  :  Make  your  home  so  happy,  so  honored,  so  hospi¬ 
table,  and  so  substantial  that  your  children  shall  vie  with 


824 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


each  other  as  to  who  can  possess  it,  keep  it,  and  transmit 
it  more  honored  still  and  more  substantial  to  their  dearest. 
Love  to  have  your  married  children  settle  near  you ;  en¬ 
courage  and  help  them  to  build  homes  like  your  own. 
Give  them  to  understand,  by  your  advice  and  example,  that 
the  fortune  which  they  may  make  in  their  turn  is  not  to  be 
spent  by  the  possessor  in  mere  personal  enjoyment,  but 
laid  up  for  his  children  and  the  poor  and  God’ s  Church,  in 
their  need. 

“  This  small  inheritance  my  father  left  me 
Contenteth  me,  and  is  worth  a  monarchy. 

I  seek  not  to  wax  great  by  others’  waning. 

Or  gather  wealth,  I  care  not  with  what  envy ; 

Sufliceth  that  I  have  maintains  my  state. 

And  sends  the  poor  well  pleased  from  my  gate.”  * 

This  spirit  is  not  that  which  animates  in  our  day  nations 
and  individuals.  The  universal  tendency  is  to  make  the 
most  of  the  present,  and  to  let  those  who  come  after  us  take 
care  of  themselves.  Families  in  the  olden  time,  even  those 
of  farmers  and  tradesmen,  were  most  ambitious  to  leave  a 
home  and  a  name  after  them, — the  home  and  the  name  they 
had  received  from  their  fathers.  Men  of  all  classes  resem¬ 
bled  the  banian  or  sacred  tree  of  India,  which  sends  down 
from  its  lower  branches  air-roots  into  the  earth.  These  in 
their  turn  grow  up  to  be  strong  props,  supporting  the  hori¬ 
zontal  branches  and  remaining  connected  with  the  parent 
trunk.  Thus  does  the  latter  multiply  itself  till  it  covers 
many  an  acre  of  land,  and  affords  shelter  to  thousands. 

But  fathers  among  us  care  little  about  founding  a  house  ; 
nor  do  their  sons  preserve  any  lasting  affection  for  the  home 
in  which  they  were  born.  Families  nowadays  resemble  the 
solitary  trees  left  behind  by  the  settler  when  ax  and  lire 
have  swept  away  the  forest  from  around  his  abode.  They 
pine  alone,  graceful  and  stately  it  may  be,  amid  the  waste, 
but  they  leave  no  descendants  behind  them. 

“  There  is  nothing  more  expensive  and  injurious,”  says  a 
wise  author,  “  than  changing  one’s  residence.  Things  are 


*  Shakespeare,  “Henry  VI.,”  part  ii.,  activ.,  scene  x. 


OBSTACLES  TO  TEE  WIFE’S  GOOD  GOVERNMENT.  325 

lost  and  broken.  It  lias  an  influence  even  on  the  mind ; 
ideas  are  discomposed  and  troubled,  and  some  time  must 
elapse  before  they  resume  their  wonted  order.  I  wish  that 
all  who  are  mine  should  lodge  under  the  same  roof,  warm 
themselves  at  the  same  hearth,  and  sit  at  the  same  table. 
The  united  family  obtains  more  consideration  than  if  it  was 
dispersed.  If  divided  and  less  numerous,  it  will  never  ar¬ 
rive  at  the  same  esteem,  authority,  and  importance.”  * 

Let  fathers  and  mothers  forgive  these  earnest  wishes  we 
form  for  seeing  their  homes  ideal  homes,  most  blessed 
homes  ;  for  seeing  them  also  substantial  and  permanent 
homes, — not  like  tents  set  up  for  the  night  and  struck  with 
the  next  dawn,  but  homes  that  will  continue  to  be  loved 
and  revered  by  many  a  generation  of  noble  Christian  men 
and  women, — to  whom  every  stone  shall  “  represent  the 
ancient  honor  and  venerated  virtue  of  the  family,”  and  the 
dwelling  itself  shall  be  “  the  heart  of  loyalty  and  the  sanc¬ 
tuary  of  honor.” 

Such  it  can  and  will  be  with  the  cordial  co-operation  of  a 
husband  possessed  of  manly  spirit,  devotion  to  his  wife,  and 
a  conscientious  desire  of  fulfilling  the  divine  will.  Fathers, 
whoever  you  are,  let  it  be  your  purpose  to  make  your  home 
such  that  every  son  of  yours  in  passing  it  would  uncover 
his  head  and  almost  bend  his  knee,  as  if  it  were  the  temple 
of  the  living  God,  and  honored  with  the  presence  of  his 
vailed  majesty,  f 

OBSTACLES  TO  THE  WIFE’S  GOOD  GOVERNMENT. 

If  the  home  is  what  it  ought  to  be,  what  God  intends  it 
should  be,  its  mistress  and  sovereign  is  so  not  only  by  the 
nature  of  things,  but  by  the  supremacy  of  her  own  good¬ 
ness,  and  the  free  and  loving  homage  of  her  husband.  He 
is  to  be,  throughout  his  whole  life,  the  first  servant  of  her 
he  has  made  queen  over  his  household  and  his  heart. 

*  Angelo  Pandolfini,  Governo  della  Famiglia. 

f  “  Groenveld  on  liis  way  to  execution,  when  passing  by  his  father’s  house 
bent  his  knees  looking  toward  it,  and  then  courageously  met  his  death.” — 
Digby. 


326  THE  mirror  of  true  womanhood. 

What  happens,  when,  instead  of  this  loving  service  done 
to  his  wife,  instead  of  being  her  willing  and  docile  instru¬ 
ment  in  furthering  the  happiness  of  all  subject  to  them, 
instead  of  co-operating  with  her  in  the  divine  work. of  edm 
eating  and  elevating  both  children  and  servants,— he  be¬ 
comes  her  chief  obstacle,  the  ever-present  and  insuperable 
difficulty  which  no  one  can  remove  from  her  path  ? 

We  do  not  wish  to  cast  a  shadow  on  the  spirit  of  the 
reader  by  dwelling  for  one  moment  on  the  extreme  cases — 
alas,  all  too  frequent  among  us — of  habitual  intemperance, 
or  unfaithfulness  in  husbands,  bound  by  the  obligations 
inherent  to  their  state  to  be  models  of  virtue  and  the  guar¬ 
dians  of  the  sacred  honor  of  their  homes. 

The  wife  whose  heart  is  not  broken,  whose  life  is  not 
shortened,  and  whose  spirit  is  not  utterly  prostrated  on 
discovering  her  companion  to  be  the  slave  of  intemperance, 
his  affections  to  be  given  to  another,  or  his  soul  to  be  a 
loathsome  moral  ulcer, — must  be  sustained  by  the  hand  of 
God.  W e  have  shown  one  example  of  such  a  sad  lot  in  a 
preceding  chapter ;  *  but  how  many  young  wives  possess 
the  angelic  piety  and  heroic  fortitude  of  Portugal’s  most 
lovely  flower  of  sanctity  ? 

There  are  some,  however ; — there  are,  we  doubt,  many 
more  than  we  suspect.  God  knows  how  to  feed  the  springs 
of  nobleness  and  spiritual  life  in  the  souls  most  dear  to  him, 
in  those  especially  who  seek  4  4  to  make  of  their  cross  their 
crown.”  In  the  very  homes  where  the  drunkard’s  beastly 
life  would  seem  to  kill  every  germ  of  happiness  in  the  hearts 
of  wife  and  children,  and  to  blight  every  promise  and  pros¬ 
pect  of  future  prosperity, — faith  and  love  will  continue  to 
live  within  the  soul  of  a  gentle  woman,  and  hope  to  survive 
all  the  crushing  disappointments  of  the  past. 

In  the  frightful  cold  of  the  highest  latitudes  ever  yet 
reached  by  man,  even  beneath  the  ice  and  the  snow  which 
the  sun  of  last  year  and  many  preceding  suns  had  failed  to 
melt, — our  heroic  travelers  have  discovered,  on  digging  deep 


*  Chapter  VIII.,  pp.  117  and  following. 


OBSTACLES  IN  THE  WEALTHY  HOME. 


327 


to  the  soil,  the  beautiful  heath  called  Andromeda  still  liv¬ 
ing  and  awaiting  a  future  spring.  The  hardy  little  thing 
has  its  own  internal  heat,  and  thaws  the  first  soft  snow 
which  covers  it,  forming  thus  a  kind  of  dome  or  roof  of  ice 
above  itself  ;  and  there  it  lives  on  secure,  with  the  buds  of 
its  pretty  flowers  in  their  sheaths  ready  to  expand  when 
the  long  winter  is  over,  and  the  first  rays  of  sunshine  fall 
upon  its  bed. 

And  are  not  immortal  souls  more  a  care  to  the  Father 
of  all  than  the  heath-flower  of  the  extreme  north,  or  the 
queenliest  blossom  that  blows  among  the  wild  luxuriance 
of  the  Brazilian  forest  ?  So,  brave  hearts,  in  your  desolated 
homes,  over  which  have  settled  the  darkness  and  the  cold 
of  more  than  the  longest  arctic  winter,  be  sure  that  God 
the  life-giver  is  with  you,  and  that  His  warmth, — who  is 
the  Sun  of  all  comfort, — will  visit  you  in  good  season. 

OBSTACLES  IN  THE  WEALTHY  HOME. 

Apart  from  the  extreme  case  of  habitual  intemperance 
and  such  destroying  vices  as  we  have  just  mentioned,  the 
wealthy  wife  may  have  to  contend  with  other  difficulties. 
Her  husband, — though  neither  dissipated  nor  intemperate, 
may  be  entirely  out  of  sympathy  with  her  best  and  most 
cherished  designs  for  the  education  of  her  children  and  the 
government  of  her  household,  as  well  as  for  all  her  most 
legitimate  works  of  outdoor  charity  and  zeal.  Thus,  espe¬ 
cially  in  the  great  labor  of  educating  her  children,  there 
will  be  a  want  of  sympathy  in  what  a  true  woman  holds  to 
be  most  dear  and  sacred.  It  is  a  sad  trial. 

But  if  most  women  are  discouraged  by  this  lack  of  sym¬ 
pathy,  or  of  efficient  co-operation  on  the  part  of  their  hus¬ 
bands,  there  are  others, — and  they  are  not  so  very  rare, — 
who  have  derived  fresh  courage  and  energy  from  their  hus¬ 
bands’  apathy,  doubling  their  efforts  to  secure  to  their  dear 
ones  the  highest  culture  of  mind  and  heart,  and  employing 
a  God-inspired  industry  and  perseverance  to  interest  the 
father  in  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  advancement  of  his 
children. 


828 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


A  woman  of  genuine  piety  will,  like  St.  Monica,  know 
what  virtue  there  is  in  fervent  prayer  and  tears  poured  out 
before  the  divine  majesty  in  favor  of  the  callous  soul.  .  As 
in  the  case  of  Augustine,  so  in  the  case  of  the  worst  hus¬ 
bands,  we  should  say  to  the  mourner,  “  It  is  impossible  that 
the  son  of  such  tearful  prayers  should  perish  !  ”  But  there 
are  other  remedies  which  God  wonderfully  blesses.  Not 
only  must  you  make  your  children  pray  with  you  and  tell 
them  that  they  are  praying  for  their  parent ; — you  should 
also  stimulate  them  in  their  studies  and  their  progress  in 
all  goodness  by  the  thought  of  thereby  making  their  father 
happy. 

Get  up  in  his  honor  little  family  festivals, — with  recita¬ 
tions,  music,  and  other  like  amusements  ;  interest  the  entire 
household  in  these  entertainments,  with  such  of  his  friends 
as  he  would  wish  to  see  pleased.  It  is  rare  that  the  most 
indifferent  and  unsympathetic  remains  uninterested  or  un¬ 
moved  by  such  exhibitions  as  these.  We  merely  suggest. 
We  have  seen  the  experiment  succeed  so  marvelously  that 
we  deem  it  worth  while  to  counsel  a  renewal  of  it. 

There  is  worse  than  want  of  sympathy,  however:  there 
is  interference  with  the  mother’s  plans  and  methods  in 
rearing  her  children,  or  in  caring  for  the  instruction  and 
comfort  of  her  servants.  This  is  a  great  hardship.  But 
what  is  to  be  done  ? 

Not  to  lose  heart;  to  do  as  much  of  one’s  duty  as  cir¬ 
cumstances  permit ;  to  go  on  from  day  to  day  giving  to  the 
young  plants  under  one’s  care  as  much  attention  and  cul¬ 
ture  as  is  possible ;  and  to  trust  in  the  divine  assistance  for 
a  change,  sooner  or  later. 

Besides,  does  not  the  homely  truth  of  the  old  favorite 
ballad,  “Love  will  find  out  the  way,”  apply  to  such  cases 
as  this  most  unreasonable  opposition  from  one’s  husband? 
Will  not  the  love  which  survives  in  a  true  woman’s  heart 
for  the  man  she  once  loved  best  of  all  the  world,  prompt 
some  one  way  to  bring  him  to  her  way  of  thinking  ?  And 
even  should  that  wifely  love  be  dead,  dead, — will  not  the 
mother’s  love  “find  out  the  way”  of  overcoming  the  obsta- 


OBSTACLES  E V  THE  WEALTHY  HOME. 


329 


cle  ?  Again  we  remind  mothers  so  circumstanced  that  He 
whose  work  they  are  trying  to  do  binds  himself  to  aid 
them,  and  will  surely  lend  his  assistance  to  their  strenuous 
and  persevering  efforts.  Monica  converted  her  pagan  hus¬ 
band,  as  well  as  his  mother :  it  was  a  hard  struggle  with  a 
weak  soul  utterly  steeped  in  heathen  vices  and  self-indul¬ 
gence  ; — and  she  ended  by  winning  her  son  to  God, — a  still 
harder  conquest,  for  in  the  case  of  Augustine  there  was  the 
pride  of  intellect  to  overcome  as  well  as  the  terrible  power 
of  human  respect  and  a  life  of  more  refined  indulgence  as 
yet  in  its  prime. 

How  can  you  tell  what  your  children  may  be  in  God’ s 
designs  ? 

In  this  case, — of  Augustine’s  father,  Patricius, — we  have 
touched  upon  the  terrible  obstacle  offered  to  the  mother’s 
teaching  and  moral  training  by  the  evil  examples  of  a  father. 
W e  cannot  do  better  than  recommend  to  mothers  circum¬ 
stanced  as  Monica  was  the  lesson  of  her  life  and  examples. 
Let  us  listen  to  one  page  of  Augustine’s  “Confessions,”  *  as 
if  we  paused  for  a  few  minutes  on  a  toilsome  and  steep  path, 
to  look  down  on  a  lovely  vale  and  breathe  deliciously  the 
mingled  fragrance  borne  upward  to  us  by  the  summer  air. 

“Being  modestly  and  soberly  trained,  and  rather  made 
subject  by  Thee  to  her  parents,  than  by  her  parents  to 
Thee,  when  she  had  arrived  at  a  marriageable  age  she  was 
given  a  husband  whom  she  served  as  her  lord.  And  she 
busied  herself  to  gain  him  to  Thee,  preaching  Thee  unto  him 
by  her  behavior  ;  by  which  Thou  madest  her  fair,  and  reve¬ 
rently  amiable,  and  admirable  unto  her  husband.  .  .  . 

For  she  waited  for  Thy  mercy  upon  him  that  by  believ¬ 
ing  in  Thee  he  might  become  chaste.  And  besides  this, 
as  he  was  earnest  in  friendship,  so  was  he  violent  in  an¬ 
ger  ;  but  she  had  learned  that  an  angry  husband  should 
not  be  resisted,  neither  in  deed  nor  even  in  word.  But  so 
soon  as  he  was  grown  calm,  she  would  give  him  a  reason  for 
her  conduct,  should  he  have  been  excited  without  cause. 


*  “Confessions,”  b.  ix.,  c.  ix.,  Pilkington’s  translation. 


330 


THE  MIllROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


“In  short,  while  many  matrons  whose  husbands  were 
more  gentle,  carried  the  marks  of  blows  on  their  dishonored 
faces,  and  would  in  private  conversation  blame  the  lives  of 
their  husbands,  she  would  blame  their  tongues.  .  .  . 

And  when  they,  knowing  what  a  furious  husband  she  had 
to  endure,  marveled  that  it  had  never  been  reported,  nor  ap¬ 
peared  by  any  indication,  that  Patricius  had  beaten  his  wife, 
or  that  there  had  been  any  domestic  strife  between  them, 
even  for  a  day,  and  asked  her  in  confidence  the  reason  of 
this,  she  taught  them  her  rule,  which  I  have  mentioned 
above.  They  who  observed  it  experienced  the  wisdom  of  it, 
and  rejoiced ;  those  who  observed  it  not  were  kept  in  sub¬ 
jection,  and  suffered.  *  .  .  Such  a  one  was  she,  Thou,  her 
most  intimate  instructor,  teaching  her  in  the  school  of  her 
heart.  .  .  .  She  was  also  the  servant  of  Thy  servants. 

Whosoever  of  them  knew  her,  did  in  her  much  magnify, 
honor,  and  love  Thee  ;  for  that  through  the  testimony  of 
the  fruits  of  a  holy  conversation  (life),  they  perceived  Thee 
to  be  present  in  her  heart.  For  she  had  4  been  the  wife  of 
one  man,’  had  requited  her  parents,  had  guided  her  house 
piously,  had  brought  up  children,  bringing  them  forth  anew 
as  often  as  she  saw  them  swerving  from  Thee.  Lastly,  to  all 
of  us,  0  Lord,  .  .  .  who,  before  she  slept  in  Thee,  lived 

associated  together,  having  received  the  grace  of  Thy  bap¬ 
tism,  did  she  devote  care  such  as  she  might,  if  she  had  been 
the  mother  of  us  all,  served  us  as  if  she  had  been  child 
of  all.” 

Wives  and  mothers  who  bear  the  double  cross  laid  on 
Monica  must  imitate  her  faithfully,  remembering,  each  of 
them,  that  she  too  has  in  the  Spirit  ever  dwelling  in  a  faith¬ 
ful  soul  4  4  a  most  intimate  Instructor,  teaching  her  in  the 
school  of  her  heart.” 

Go  not  abroad  to  neighbors,  or  even  dearest  friend,  to  tell 
the  story  of  your  grievances,  against  your  husband, — but 
follow  the  promptings  of  that  divine  Teacher  within,  bid¬ 
ding  you  suffer,  be  patient,  pray,  labor  and  wait, — doing 
meanwhile  quietly  among  the  poor  all  the  good  you  can, 
that  they  also  may  lift  up  their  hands  in  prayer  for  you. 


OBSTACLES  IN  THE  POOR  HOME. 


331 


OBSTACLES  IN  THE  POOR  HOME. 

Whatever  hardship  a  wealthy  mother  may  find  in  doing 
a  true  woman’s  work  within  her  home, — she  has  not  the 
fear  of  poverty  or  starvation  to  contend  with.  That  is  the 
fearful  lot  of  the  poor  woman  cursed  with  an  intemperate 
or  idle  husband,  or  burdened  with  an  inefficient  or  infirm 
one. 

Where  intemperance  consumes  in  the  home  all  the  fruits 
of  a  husband’s  labor,  or  where  idleness  sits  at  the  scanty 
board  and  eats  up  the  bread  which  the  wife’ s  hard  toil  has 
to  earn  for  her  dear  ones  and  herself, — how  heavy  the  heart 
must  grow  with  the  care  of  the  morrow  !  How  weak  the 
hands  must  feel  in  doing  the  work  which  cannot  keep  fire 
enough  on  the  hearth  or  bread  enough  on  the  board  !  And 
where  is  the  leisure  for  teaching  the  children  all  too  poorly 
fed  and  too  barely  clad  to  be  sent  to  school  ?  And  if  the 
overtaxed  mother  should  find  heart  and  leisure  to  instruct 
the  little  ones  that  multiply  and  grow  up  around  her  cheer¬ 
less  hearthstone,  even  should  her  own  examples  be  most 
angelic, — can  they  be  efficacious  to  counteract  the  words, 
the  deeds, — the  profane  and  blasphemous  language,  the 
violent  and  brutal  conduct  of  a  father  who  is  either  always 
intoxicated  or  always  suffering  from  the  irritability  and 
half -frenzy  consequent  upon  habitual  intoxication  % 

Oh !  if  there  were  religious  orders  of  men  and  women 
whose  exclusive  vocation  it  would  be  to  go  to  the  succor  of 
such  mothers  as  these — and  they  are  so  numerous  !  they 
would  yearly  save  millions,  who  are  willing  to  be  saved,  but 
who  must  be  lost  without  some  such  interference  of  Heaven¬ 
sent  charity  ! 

Of  all  the  most  deserving — so  often  the  most  heroic — 
members  of  their  flocks,  none  more  than  these  mothers  ap¬ 
peal  to  the  priestly  zeal  of  our  devoted  pastors.  Our  voice 
can  scarcely  reach  these  brave  souls  fainting  on  the  road 
beneath  their  intolerable  burden,  or  it  can  only  come  to 
them  through  the  generous  hearts  this  page  may  move  with 


382 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


pity  for  Christ’s  dearest  ones.  May  he  speak  to  every  one 
of  yon,  and  impel  yon  to  aid  where  to  aid  is  the  divinest 
mercy ! 

If  yon  prefer  another  voice, — of  one  most  gifted  and  most 
blessed, — bnt  blessed  with  a  heart  all  devoted  to  the  poor, 
and  her  life  crowned  with  a  death  earned  in  their  service, — 
then  read  at  yonr  leisure  the  following  lines, — and  think, 
while  yon  read,  of  how  many  mothers  near  yonr  own  home, 
perhaps,  their  every  word  holds  trne. 

“  Hush  !  I  cannot  bear  to  see  tbee 
Stretch  tliy  tiny  hands  in  vain  ; 

Dear,  I  have  no  bread  to  give  thee. 

Nothing,  child,  to  ease  thy  pain  ! 

When  God  sent  thee  first  to  bless  me. 

Proud,  and  thankful  too,  was  I : 

Now,  my  darling,  I,  thy  mother, 

Almost  long  to  see  thee  die. 

Sleep,  my  darling,  thou  art  weary ; 

God  is  good,  but  life  is  dreary. 

**  I  have  watched  thy  beauty  fading, 

And  thy  strength  sink  day  by  day  ; 

Soon,  I  know,  will  Want  and  Fever 
Take  thy  little  life  away. 

Famine  makes  thy  father  reckless, 

Hope  has  left  both  him  and  me  ; 

We  could  suffer  all,  my  baby, 

Had  we  but  a  crust  for  thee. 

Sleep,  my  darling,  thou  art  weary ; 

God  is  good,  but  life  is  dreary. 

**  Better  thou  sliouldst  perish  early. 

Starve  so  soon,  my  darling  one. 

Than  in  helpless  sin  and  sorrow 
Vainly  live,  as  I  have  done. 

Better  that  thy  angel  spirit 

With  my  joy,  my  peace,  were  flown. 

Than  thy  heart  grew  cold  and  careless. 

Reckless,  hopeless,  like  my  own. 

Sleep,  my  darling,  thou  art  weary  ; 

God  is  good,  but  life  is  dreary. 

“  I  am  wasted,  dear,  with  hunger. 

And  my  brain  is  all  opprest, 

I  have  scarcely  strength  to  press  thee, 

Wan  and  feeble,  to  my  breast. 


OBSTACLES  IN  THE  POOR  HOME. 


Patience,  baby,  God  will  help  us. 
Death  will  come  to  thee  and  me. 

He  will  take  us  to  his  heaven, 

Where  no  want  or  pain  can  be. 

Sleep,  my  darling,  tho\i  art  weary ; 
God  is  good,  but  life  is  dreary.” 

Such  the  plaint  that,  late  and  early. 
Did  we  listen,  we  might  hear 
Close  beside  us, — but  the  thunder 
Of  a  city  dulls  our  ear. 

Every  heart,  as  God’s  bright  angel, 

Can  bid  one  such  sorrow  cease  ; 

God  has  glory  when  his  children 
Bring  such  poor  ones  joy  and  peace  l 
Listen,  nearer  while  she  sings. 
Sounds  the  fluttering  of  wings.* 


*  Adelaide  Anne  Procter. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


THE  MISTRESS  OF  THE  HOME  AND  HER  SOCIAL  DUTIES. 

Art  sets  before  us  the  images  of  some  who  by  the  path  of  love  have  con. 
ducted  men  to  God ;  for  such  is  the  mission  of  those  whom  we  have  already 
met  upon  the  road  of  the  domestic  home  and  life. — Digby. 

Oh  !  beautiful !  and  rare  as  beautiful ! 

But  theirs  was  love  in  which  the  mind  delights 
To  lose  itself,  when  the  old  world  grows  dull 
And  we  are  sick  of  its  hack  sounds  and  sights. 

See — those  are  never  objects  of  praise  who  indulge  in  delights,  who  are 
devoted  to  worldly  dissipations,  whose  pleasure  is  in  vanity  after  the  manner 
of  the  Pagans.  But  our  law  is  that  of  the  Beatitudes. — St.  Ephrem. 

The  words  “ society”  and  “social  duties,”  as  they  are  to 
be  understood  here,  have  received  from  the  real  follies  and 
criminal  vanities  of  worldly-minded  women  an  odious  mean¬ 
ing,  which  must  be  at  once  corrected  ere  we  can  enter  on  an 
explanation  of  the  noble  part  which  a  Christian  woman  has 
to  play  in  the  social  circle  to  which  she  is  born  and  to  which 
she  is  bound  by  so  many  duties  and  charities. 

The  word  “society,”  as  understood  by  the  world  of  fash¬ 
ion  and  vanity,  means  simply  assemblages  of  the  wealthy, 
the  worldly,  and  the  dissipated,  into  which  women  go  to  be 
admired  and  sought  after ;  where  the  great  purpose  of  life 
is  to  display  one’s  self  to  the  best  advantage,  to  outshine 
one’s  neighbors,  and  to  decry  them  by  a  thousand  arts. 
Women  who  have  never  gone  into  such  society  but  to  shine 
in  this  way,  and  who  rear  their  daughters  with  the  same 
notions  of  social  life,  and  introduce  them  to  “Vanity  Fair” 

334 


THE  WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD. 


335 


for  the  same  purpose  of  dazzling  and  outstripping  all  com¬ 
petitors  in  the  race  of  extravagance,  will  teach  their  chil¬ 
dren,  as  they  have  taught  themselves, — that  their  sole  duty 
in  life  is  so  to  dress  and  to  charm  in  these  gatherings  that 
they  shall  become  resistless these  are  the  persons  who 
have  given  an  odious  and  almost  criminal  sense  to  the  terms 
“ society”  and  “ social  duties.” 

And  not  without  great  reason.  For  such  women  there  is 
no  true  home  with  its  sacred  duties  and  godlike  virtues, 
with  its  serious  labor  of  self-culture  and  spiritual  advance¬ 
ment,  followed  by  the  sweet  repose  and  delightful  amuse¬ 
ments  of  the  family  circle.  There  is  no  home-life  for  these 
votaries  of  vanity.  Home  for  them  only  means  the  retire¬ 
ment  in  which  they  rest  between  one  round  of  dissipation 
and  another,  and  in  which,  when  they  have  slept  a  part  of 
their  weariness  away,  they  wearily  prepare  for  the  next 
social  meeting.  The  husbands  of  such  women  are  only 
looked  up  to  as  the  prime  ministers  of  their  pleasures,  as  a 
happy  convenience  for  providing  the  moneys  necessary  to 
their  unlimited  extravagance. 

The  care  and  regulation  of  a  household,  the  education  of 
children,  when  they  elect  to  be  burdened  with  any,  the  im¬ 
provement  or  comfort  of  their  servants,  or  the  needs  of  the 
poor  who  knock  at  their  gate, — are  to  these  weary  ones  an 
intolerable  nuisance.  Vanity, — Self,  rather,  under  another 
name, — is  the  only  deity  these  heartless  ones  worship, — and 
pleasure  is  the  sole  end  of  their  miserable  existence.  But 
let  them  view  the  deformity  of  their  own  lives  and  the  cer¬ 
tain  ruin  of  body  and  soul  toward  which  they  are  hurrying, 
by  the  contrast  presented  by  the  life  of  a  true  Christian 
woman  of  the  world,  by  her  notions  about  society  and  social 
duty,  and  her  conscientious  discharge  of  the  obligations 
imposed  by  her  position. 

THE  “WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD”  AND  THE  “  WORLDLY 

WOMAN.” 

Truth  is  like  the  broad  light  of  day  in  which  the  eye  sees 
the  reality  of  things.  In  that  light  let  us  behold  what  is 


336 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


the  difference  between  a  woman  of  the  world,  in  the  fair 
and  obvious  sense  of  the  wrords, — that  is,  a  true  Christian 
woman  living  in  the  world,  discharging  faithfully  every 
known  duty,  and  a  uwrorldly  woman,”  who  lives  for  self, 
for  human  opinion,  and  mere  enjoyment.  We  have  already 
seen  the  dark  side  of  the  picture,  let  us  now  see  the  bright. 

Most  women  have  to  live  in  the  world.  It  is  the  sphere 
of  their  labors,  often  heroic,  beneficial  to  everybody  around 
them,  and  glorious  to  God  and  his  Church.  St.  Monica 
lived  all  her  life  in  the  world,  and  discharged  most  admira¬ 
bly  all  the  duties  of  daughter,  wife,  mother,  mistress  of  a 
household,  a  member  of  the  sorely-tried  Church  in  her  day, 
and  of  the  more  than  half-pagan  society  around  her.  So 
was  it  with  many  others  of  her  contemporaries  in  the  East 
and  West:  St.  Macrina,  the  grandmother  of  St.  Basil  the 
Great,  and  St.  Emmelia,  his  mother,  were  women  of  the 
world,  living  together  in  the  same  house,  and  together  la¬ 
boring  to  rear  the  sons  of  the  latter,  three  of  whom  have 
been  revered  as  saints  by  all  succeeding  Christian  ages. 
Near  them,  in  their  native  province,  lived  another  family 
of  saints,  that  of  St.  Nonna,  the  mother  of  St.  Gregory 
Nazianzen,  who  also  converted  and  made  a  saint  of  her  hus¬ 
band.  Nor  were  such  women  and  their  families  by  any 
means  so  rare  as  one  might  be  led  to  think.  In  Africa,  we 
have  at  the  same  time  the  glorious  defender  of  Catholic 
doctrine,  St.  Athanasius,  whose  mother  declared  that  “it 
was  her  intention  to  devote  her  life  to  making  of  this  her 
only  child  a  true  servant  of  the  Church.”  She  alone  edu¬ 
cated  him,  trained  him  in  learning  and  goodness,  till  she 
made  of  him  the  wonder  of  his  age.  Under  this  most  wise 
and  loving  guide  the  boy  became  an  apostle  even  before  he 
had  ceased  to  be  a  boy.  For  even  then  he  was  wont  to 
assemble  the  pagan  children  of  his  own  age,  in  his  home  or 
in  the  street,  instructing  them  in  the  Christian  faith,  and 
when  he  had  given  them  the  desire  of  being  baptized,  bap¬ 
tizing  them  with  his  own  hand. 

And  this  man,  become  the  bishop  of  his  native  city, 
Alexandria,  having  experienced  the  powerful  influence  of 


THE  WOMAN  OF  THE  WORLD. 


337 


a  true  Christian  woman, in  his  own  early  formation,  em¬ 
ployed  the  Christian  women  of  his  church  as  the  most 
zealous  apostles  of  the  truth  and  the  most  eloquent  de 
nouncers  of  Arianism. 

We  have  already  mentioned  Anthusa,  the  illustrious  mo¬ 
ther  of  St.  John  Chrysostom,  who  lived  and  died  a  woman 
of  the  world,  without  ceasing  to  be  a  model  of  virtue. 
History  has  also  preserved  the  names  of  many  of  the  saintly 
women  who  helped  John,  when  raised  to  the  perilous  epis¬ 
copal  chair  of  Constantinople,  to  combat  the  vices  of  the 
court,  to  stem  the  torrent  of  extravagance,  luxury,  and  cor¬ 
ruption  which  swept  over  the  new  capital  and  the  surround¬ 
ing  provinces.  At  the  head  of  these  virtuous  and  most 
noble  ladies  stands  St.  Olympias,  and  among  them  may 
be  mentioned  St.  Pentalia,  St.  Sylvia,  Percuta,  Sabiniana, 
Bassiana,  Chalcidia,  Asyncritia,  and  St.  Mcareda,  of  the 
highest  nobility  of  Mcomedia,  the  mother  of  the  sick  and 
the  poor,  who  lived  and  died  in  her  own  house,  shedding 
around  her  on  every  side  the  hallowing  influences  of  her 
spotless  life  and  her  most  generous  charities. 

In  the  West,  Italy  offered  a  ]ike  spectacle  of  womanly 
holiness  and  zeal.  Pome  beheld  the  great  St.  Jerome  liter¬ 
ally  enlisting  the  patrician  ladies  into  the  service  of  the 
poor  and  the  infirm,  or  into  the  ranks  of  the  monastic  life. 
One  has  only  to  remember  such  names  as  St.  Paula  and  her 
daughter  St.  Eustochium,  and  forthwith  a  galaxy  of  glorh 
ous  Christian  women  arise  before  the  mind’ s  eye,  who  made 
of  the  Pome  of  the  fourth  century  the  worthy  parent  of  the 
Christian  Pome  of  the  nineteenth,  before  it  became  the  prey 
of  Piedmontese  infidelity  and  unblushing  corruption. 

Further  to  the  west  and  the  north  we  meet  with  St.  Am¬ 
brose,  the  spiritual  parent  of  Augustine.  Ambrose, — the 
great  magistrate,  become  a  great  archbishop  and  teacher, 
owed  also  his  education  and  holy  training  to  his  mother. 
His  father,  who  was  governor  of  all  Gaul  and  a  great  part 
of  Germany,  died  while  Ambrose  was  in  his  infancy.  The 
mother,  left  with  three  children,  succeeded  in  making  saints 
of  every  one  of  them,  Marcellina,  her  only  daughter,  being 
22 


338 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


afterward  of  immense  utility  to  her  great  brother  in  spread* 
ing  the  reign  of  Christian  piety  and  the  practical  knowledge 
of  the  higher  life  in  Milan  and  its  vicinity. 

In  the  next  generation  the  family  of  St.  Gregory  the 
Great,  as  well  as  that  of  St.  Paulinus  of  Nola,  may  be 
quoted  as  illustrious  instances  of  the  heroic  Christian  spirit 
sanctifying  all  the  spheres  of  active  life  in  the  world,  as 
distinguished  from  the  life  of  the  cloister. 

NEED  OF  TRUE  CHRISTIAN  WOMEN  IN  THE  WORLD. 

Indeed  it  is  the  homes  created  by  such  women  as  Macrina, 
Emmelia,  Nonna,  Paula,  and  Monica  which  become  the  fruit¬ 
ful  nurseries  of  the  men  and  women  who  make  the  priest¬ 
hood  venerable  and  monastic  life  flourishing  and  fervent, 
while  blessing  at  the  same  time  the  world  itself  with  the 
sweet  active  virtues  characteristic  of  Christianity.  Mothers 
who  fulfill  beneath  the  eye  of  God,  and  with  a  full  sense  of 
their  responsibility,  the  duties  of  motherhood,  wall  rear  the 
very  men  God  needs  from  whom  to  choose  both  the  apostolic 
priest  and  the  model  Christian  gentleman  and  statesman ; 
— they  will  also  form  to  their  own  image  and  likeness  the 
maidens  whom  the  Divine  Spirit  will  as  surely  direct  to 
follow  the  Lamb  in  the  paths  of  his  apostleship,  or  to  remain 
behind  to  create  and  sanctify  homes  of  their  own. 

But  the  mothers  who  rear  such  sons  and  daughters, — and 
such  of  these  daughters  as  God  wills  to  remain  in  the  secu¬ 
lar  life  to  perpetuate  the  precious  virtues  learned  from  their 
parent, — have  other  duties  beside  the  education  of  children, 
the  happiness  of  a  husband,  the  economy  of  a  household. 
The  wife  of  the  laborer  or  the  mechanic  lias  duties  toward 
the  neighbor,  duties  toward  the  Church,  duties  toward  the 
various  institutions  of  education  and  beneficence  in  which 
every  family  and  every  individual  in  the  community  are  in¬ 
terested. 

But  this  is  much  more  true  of  the  wife  of  the  wealthy 
man,  of  the  magistrate,  the  legislator, — of  the  large  propri¬ 
etor,  the  nobleman,  and  the  prince.  Beside  their  most  im¬ 
portant  and  most  onerous  household  obligations,  these 


IMPORTANCE  OF  SOCIAL  DUTIES. 


339 


women  have  others  which  they  cannot  dispense  with,  and 
which,  properly  and  conscientiously  fulfilled,  are  most  con¬ 
ducive  to  the  interests  of  religion  as  well  as  to  the  benefit 
of  the  community  at  large. 

IMPORTANCE  OF  A  CHRISTIAN  WOMAN’S  SOCIAL  DUTIES. 

Treating  as  we  are  of  the  duties  of  women  in  the  world, — 
of  women  of  all  classes, — it  surely  will  not  be  denied  that 
the  wives  and  daughters  of  sovereigns,  of  chief  magistrates 
under  any  form  of  government,  and  those  of  public  func¬ 
tionaries  of  all  degrees,  are  bound  to  receive  and  entertain, 
to  appear  in  public  on  certain  occasions,  to  accept  invita¬ 
tions  to  certain  social  gatherings.  This  is,  this  has  ever 
been,  and  is  likely  ever  to  be,  considered  a  real  and  most 
important  duty  inherent  to  the  position  filled  by  all  such 
persons. 

In  our  own  age, — not  to  seek  examples  too  far  off, — we 
all  have  known  or  read  of  women,  at  once  most  exalted  in 
rank  and  most  exalted  in  virtue,  who  felt  themselves  bound 
to  honor  their  position  by  showing  a  courtly  grace  in  every 
circle  in  which  duty  compelled  them  to  be  the  central  figures, 
by  dispensing  a  right  royal  or  princely  hospitality  on  every 
occasion, — indeed  on  every  day  of  their  lives  ; — who  knew 
on  these  very  days,  early  or  late,  to  visit  our  Lord  in  the 
persons  of  the  needy  and  sick.  In  the  queen,  the  princess, 
the  noble  lady  of  whatever  rank,  in  the  gentlewoman,  the 
merchant  or  the  mechanic’ s  wife,  the  Spirit  of  God  will  be 
sure  to  manifest  his  presence  by  the  light  on  the  features 
or  in  the  eye,  by  the  words  dropped  in  conversation  in  the 
reception-room,  at  table,  or  even  in  the  strictest  privacy. 

Every  one  knows, — even  France  which  upset  the  throne 
of  the  husband  has  not  forgotten  the  angelic  virtues  and 
noble  charities  of  the  wife  and  her  daughters, — how  the 
late  Queen  of  the  French,  Marie  Amelie,  was  the  light  of 
Louis  Philippe’s  court,  and  “  the  providence”  (as  they  were 
wont  to  call  her)  of  the  poor  far  and  near.  There  never  was 
one  word  of  scandal  uttered  about  the  royal  circle.  Sli6 


340 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


was  a  devoted  and  worshiped  wife ;  and  the  sons  she  has 
left  behind  show  by  their  lives  how  well  she  discharged  her 
motherly  duties.  But  her  daughters  reflected  in  an  especial 
manner  the  virtues  of  their  admirable  parent.  One,  above 
all  the  others,  walked  closely  in  her  mother’s  footsteps, 
Louise,  Queen  of  the  Belgians,  whose  memory  to  this  day 
is  venerated  in  every  Christian  home  in  the  land.  Such 
women  were  worthy  of  the  blood  of  St.  Louis. 

Not  less  admirable  were  the  princesses  of  the  royal  houses 
of  Savoy,  Bavaria,  and  Austria.  More  than  one  of  them 
are  at  this  moment  candidates  for  the  honors  of  canoniza¬ 
tion.  What  though  the  king  who  disgraces  in  the  Quirinal, 
his  line,  his  faith,  and  his  station,  should  be  the  son  of  a 
saintly  mother  l  Solomon  was  the  son  of  David,  and  Ro- 
boam  was  worse  than  Solomon.  The  virtues  which  adorned 
so  many  princes  of  the  ancient  house  of  Savoy  reappear  in 
the  prince  who  resigned  the  crown  of  Spain,  and  is  now 
content,  like  another  of  his  near  ancestors,  *  to  become,  after 
his  young  wife’ s  death,  the  humble  member  of  a  religious 
order. 

No  one  who  has  approached  the  ladies  who  grace  the 
thrones  of  Austria,  Bavaria,  Belgium,  and  Portugal,  or  who 
are  the  companions  in  exile  and  in  private  station  of  the 
royal  families  of  France  and  Naples,  but  are  as  cordial  as 
they  are  unanimous  in  praising  in  them  the  courtly  graces 
which  lend  a  luster  to  their  exalted  rank,  and  the  unaffected 
piety  which  adorns  their  private  life.  Wherever  they  are, 
the  poor  far  and  wide  soon  learn  to  bless  them. 

CATHOLIC  LADIES  EVERYWHERE  TRUE  CHRISTIANS  AS  WELL 

AS  WOMEN  OF  THE  WORLD. 

Our  American  travelers  who  have  spent  a  single  season 
in  London  must  have  been  struck  by  the  multiplicity  of 
good  works  to  which  English,  Irish,  and  Scotch  Catholic  la¬ 
dies  of  high  rank  residing  there,  devote  themselves.  Indeed 
one  has  only  to  glance  over  the  notices  in  the  London  Tablet 


*  Charles  Emmanuel  II.  died  a  Jesuit  lay-brother. 

V 


AMERICAN  LADIES  IN  PUBLIC  AND  PRIVATE.  341 


or  Weekly  Register ,  to  see  how  active  they  are  in  promoting 
public  charities  of  every  kind.  And  yet  only  a  few  of  these 
appear  on  the  surface  ;  the  greater  number,  the  most  costly 
to  the  noble  patronesses  or  founders,  are  carried  on  quietly, 
far  away  from  the  public  eye.  One  of  these  noble  women, 
Cecilia,  Marchioness  of  Lothian,  died  in  Rome  during  the 
month  of  June.  It  is  only  since  her  sudden  and  lamented 
death  that  most  men  have  heard  of  her  unlimited  generosity 
and  indefatigable  zeal  in  providing  for  the  manifold  needs 
of  the  London  poor.  But  Scotland  had  also  most  touching 
stories  to  tell  of  that  charity  which  could  not  help  giving, 
but  loved  to  give  in  secret,  like  the  life-giving  warmth  of 
the  sun  which  works  through  the  long  hours  of  the  spring 
and  summer  and  autumn,  long  after  the  great  luminary  has 
withdrawn  his  light.  Another,  no  less  noble  and  no  less 
devoted,  was  with  Lady  Lothian  when  God  gave  her  rest  in 
the  City  of  the  Holy  Apostles  ;  of  her  numberless  charities 
England  as  well  as  her  native  Ireland  could  tell  many  a 
thrilling  tale.  But  she  is  still  among  the  living  ;  and  so  is 
another  of  world- wide  fame  as  a  writer,  as  good  as  she  is 
noble, — a  passionate  lover  of  poverty,  devoting  to  the  poor 
not  only  the  proceeds  of  her  literary  labors,  but  every  thing 
she  can  spare  from  her  necessary  household  expenses.  And 
these  are  only  three  among  thousands  on  both  sides  of  the 
Channel  who  do  not  think  they  can  dispense  themselves 
from  complying  with  the  duties  of  their  social  position, 
while  being  most  exemplary  in  the  accomplishment  of  every 
obligation  of  family  life. 

AMERICAN  LADIES  MODELS  IN  PUBLIC  AND  IN  PRIVATE. 

Although  American  society  is  not  divided  into  distinct 
and  acknowledged  classes,  there  has  been,  from  the  begin¬ 
ning,  in  every  one  of  the  colonies  out  of  which  the  republic 
has  grown,  a  well-defined  and  recognized  u  good  society,” 
which  is  almost  if  not  quite  as  exclusive  in  its  intercourse 
as  any  of  the  aristocracies  of  Europe.  Families  which  rise 
from  the  laboring  and  industrial  classes  are  not  always 
easily  admitted  into  the  home  circles  of  the  old  families. 


342 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


At  any  rate,  the  cities  which  had  originally  a  large  Cath¬ 
olic  population,  such  as  Baltimore,  St.  Louis,  and  New 
Orleans,  have  also  had  at  every  epoch  a  large,  distinguished, 
and  influential  Catholic  society.  Other  cities  throughout 
the  Union  do,  indeed,  surpass  these  in  the  numbers  of  their 
Catholic  inhabitants  ;  but  these  do  not  possess  the  charm 
of  comparative  “  antiquity,”  are  not  looked  up  to  by  “the 
Americans  of  the  Americans,”  and  have  to  establish  their 
social  credit  by  culture,  public  services,  and  a  sustained 
reputation. 

Nevertheless  there  is  in  every  large  city  throughout  the 
country  a  steadily  increasing  population,  whose  educated 
classes  could  form  among  themselves  very  creditable  social 
gatherings,  but  wdio,  very  properly,  prefer  to  mingle  on  all 
social  occasions  with  families  belonging  to  other  religious 
denominations. 

The  first  occasion,  for  instance,  in  which  the  best  elements 
of  the  Catholic  population  of  New  York  City  were  brought 
together  conspicuously,  was  during  the  great  charity  fair 
for  the  Eleventh  Street  Hospital,  gotten  up  in  the  Crystal 
Palace  in  1856.  The  numbers  and  respectability  of  the 
Catholic  population  were  only  then  revealed  to  the  persons 
most  interested  in  ascertaining  them.  But,  save  wdien  some 
great  purpose  of  religion  or  charity  happens  to  call  Cath¬ 
olics  together,  they  wisely  abstain  from  forming  among 
themselves  exclusive  social  circles,  and  mingle  with  neigh¬ 
bors  and  acquaintance  of  their  own  class  like  other  citizens. 

HOW  CHARITY  AND  RELIGION  ARE  PROMOTED  BY  SOCIAL 

GATHERINGS. 

One  thing  is  certain, — that  where  mothers  have  been  care¬ 
ful  to  educate  their  sons  and  daughters  in  the  elevating  and 
refining  atmosphere  of  “  the  Gentle  Life,”  which  is  born  of 
enlightened  piety,  they  cannot  fail  in  a  republican  country 
to  be  welcome  guests  in  every  circle.  Where  a  man  of  good 
standing  and  education  shows  himself  to  be  truly  “the 
scholar  and  the  gentleman,”  there  is  no  circle  into  which 


HOW  CHARITY  AND  RELIGION  ARE  PROMOTED.  343 


he  may  not  be  admitted  ;  and  where  his  sisters  have  all  the 
solid  and  graceful  accomplishments  of  the  true  Gentle  Life 
we  have  been  sketching  under  so  many  forms,  there  is  no 
circle  which  they  cannot  ornament,  shining  wherever  they 
appear  with  a  light  which  will  hurt  the  eyes  of  none,  while 
it  serves  to  diffuse  the  influence  of  genuine  goodness  and 
gentleness. 

Every  true  Christian  mother  who  has  had  herself  experi¬ 
ence  of  the  power  of  such  goodness  and  gentleness  in  an 
accomplished  woman,  will  deem  it  her  duty  to  prepare  her 
sons  and  daughters  for  their  appearance  in  society.  If  her 
home-life,  her  home-education  and  amusements  have  been 
in  conformity  with  the  rules  laid  down  here  and  there  in 
the  preceding  chapters,  their  “  coming  out,”  as  it  is  phrased, 
will  be  no  sudden  and  abrupt  transition  from  obscurity  into 
dazzling  light,  or  from  simple,  homely  manners  to  the 
strange  stateliness  and  ceremonial  of  a  superior  world. 

As  these  remarks  are  addressed,  principally  at  least,  to 
educated  women  of  position  whose  sons  and  daughters  are 
supposed  to  display  in  their  daily  home-circles  the  accom¬ 
plishments  of  music  and  song,  there  will  be  for  them  but 
little  of  novelty  and  no  strangeness  in  their  displaying  their 
best  powers  for  the  delight  of  the  first  great  company  assem¬ 
bled  in  their  own  honor,  or  for  the  amusement  of  any  circle, 
even  the  most  brilliant  and  cultivated,  in  which  they  may 
subsequently  appear. 

The  piety  they  have  drunk  in  with  their  mother’ s  milk, 
will  be  a  sure  preventive  against  the  foolish  vanity  which 
troubles  some  light  brains.  Where  singing,  playing,  and 
all  the  conversational  arts  are  an  every-day  exercise  in  good 
families  and  in  presence  of  guests  who  are  good  judges  of 
proficiency,  there  is  as  little  ground  for  vanity  in  the  dis¬ 
play  as  there  is  of  novelty.  What  is  done  habitually  is 
soon  done  unconsciously, — and  with  the  naturalness  aris¬ 
ing  from  habit  come  that  ease  and  grace  which  are  the 
great  charm  of  those  whose  home  has  ever  been  for  them 
the  school  of  “  the  Gentle  Life.” 

Of  course,  while  an  experienced  and  thoughtful  mother 


344 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


is  thus  training  her  sons  and  daughters  within  her  own 
home-sanctuary,  she  is  fully  aware  of  the  importance  of  the 
social  duties  for  which  such  training  so  admirably  prepares 
them ;  but  she  is  also  most  careful  that  they  shall  not 
know  that  their  education  is  directed  toward  any  such  pur¬ 
pose.  If  this  long  home  preparation  be  carried  on  beneath 
the  eye  of  God,  with  a  final  view  to  his  honor,  by  making 
his  religion  lovely  in  the  person  of  its  professors,  and  by 
thus  drawing  to  the  truth  souls  for  whom  Christ  died, — 
will  this  not  be  the  highest  charity  ?  and  will  not  religion 
win  the  only  triumph  aimed  at  both  by  the  pious  mo¬ 
ther  and  her  worthy  children  \  And, — in  very  truth, — how 
many  souls,  among  the  best,  the  purest,  the  most  gifted 
have  been  gained  in  the  past,  and  are  still  daily  won  to  God 
by  the  unconscious  charm  of  an  accomplished  but  innocent 
young  man  or  woman. 

So  long,  therefore,  as  society  exists,  the  charities  of 
neighborly  intercourse  must  be  a  duty  incumbent  on  all, 
and,  above  all,  on  the  professors  of  the  true  religion ;  for 
true  religion  there  cannot  be  without  true  charity, — active, 
practical,  and  aiming  at  the  highest  good  of  others.  Neigh¬ 
borly  intercourse  means  for  each  mistress  of  a  home  that 
she  will  exert  herself  to  make  it  a  center  of  attraction  for 
all  who  can  benefit  her  children  and  herself,  or  who  can 
be  benefited  by  them,  and  that  her  visitors  shall  go  away 
delighted  to  return  again  and  again.  It  also  means  that  she 
and  her  children  will,  in  their  turn,  grace  the  family  circles 
of  these  same  friends  and  neighbors. 

The  influence  of  the  Christian  mother’s  home-circles,  and 
the  very  charm  which  she  and  such  as  she  exert  in  the 
social  gatherings  where  they  appear,  are  the  only  possible 
and  the  most  powerful  corrective  to  the  corrujrting  influence 
of  that  world  so  well  denominated  “  Vanity  Fair.” 

ELOQUENT  FACTS 

We  shall  suppose, — both  to  instruct  and  to  encourage  the 
reader,  — a  young  woman,  a  wife  and  a  mother,  reared  ex- 


ELOQUENT  FACTS. 


345 


actly  in  such  a  Christian  home  as  we  have  been  painting,— 
to  find  herself  led  by  the  hand  of  Providence  where  public 
wants  and  abuses  of  every  kind  demand  the  labors  of  super¬ 
human  zeal.  W e  shall  not  suppose  it  to  be  a  new  settle¬ 
ment  in  our  W estern  wilds,  or  an  infant  colony  in  Australia 
or  South-eastern  Africa,  where  all  has  to  be  created,  and 
where  every  living  soul  is  but  too  glad  to  obey  the  voice 
and  follow  the  lead  of  a  young  and  noble-hearted  woman. 
Instances  there  are  on  record  of  the  good  achieved  by  such 
women  in  such  places  in  past  times  and  within  this  present 
year  of  grace.  But  we  shall  take  a  concourse  of  circum¬ 
stances  far  more  formidable  to  the  bravest  heart, — a  scene 
where,  to  all  appearance,  woman’ s  influence  will  be  as  feeble 
against  the  adverse  influences  around  her  as  the  current  of 
the  Mississippi,  the  Orinoco,  or  the  Amazon  to  freshen  the 
bitter  waters  of  the  South  Atlantic  Ocean. 

Here  is  a  country  long  settled,  with  an  upper  class  be¬ 
longing  to  the  proudest,  most  sensitive,  and  unchangeable 
of  the  ancient  European  races,  with  an  inferior  population 
of  the  pure  aboriginal  natives,  and  a  mongrel  mixture  of 
half-breeds.  The  climate  is  a  most  enervating  one,  rendered 
unsafe  by  fatal  endemic  diseases  and  by  the  most  terrible 
visitations  of  the  plague.  Commerce  has  no  marts  or  out¬ 
lets,  industry  offers  no  stimulus  to  labor,  invention,  or 
progress ;  morality  is  low,  and  religion  is  both  hampered 
by  state  legislation  and  rendered  powerless  by  the  ignor¬ 
ance,  the  inertness,  or  the  vices  of  its  own  ministers.  The 
institution  of  matrimony,  as  the  Church  intends  it  and  as 
it  operates  on  home-life  and  public  society,  where  religion 
is  free, — has  long  ceased  to  be  respected  in  this  God-for¬ 
saken  land.  Unions,  among  several  of  the  wealthiest,  the 
most  influential,  are  mere  engagements  formed  on  conve¬ 
nience  or  inclination,  to  be  broken  when  the  parties  weary 
of  each  other,  or  a  new  passion  arises  ;  and  the  inferior 
classes  are  not  slow  to  imitate  the  examples  of  their  betters. 
And  so,  unblessed  of  God,  and  with  but  little  thought  of  crav¬ 
ing  his  blessing,  the  current  of  social  life  moves  sluggishly 
on  in  its  impure  channels.  Add  to  all  this,  that  sanguinary 


346 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


political  revolutions  are  as  frequent  there  as  changes  in  the 
moon. 

One  of  the  noblest  sons  of  this  unhappy  country  is  sent 
for  his  education  to  a  great  distance,  and,  while  breathing 
its  free  religious  air,  is  drawn  within  the  influence  of  a 
Catholic  home  where  all  is  purity,  peace,  piety,  and  refine¬ 
ment.  The  eldest  daughter  is  remarkable,  not  for  striking 
beauty  of  person,  but  for  that  indefinable  charm  of  superior 
goodness  which  is  felt  like  a  most  potent  spell  by  all  who 
approach  her,  for  extreme  grace  of  manner,  rare  intellectual 
culture,  and  that  divine  gift  of  song  which,  possessed  by 
angelic  virtue,  becomes  in  the  possessor  a  charm  that  can 
tame  the  wildest  and  soften  the  most  obdurate. 

The  stranger  wins  this  gifted  maiden  ;  she  prefers  him  to 
many  men  more  wealthy  and  more  attractive,  because  he  is 
good  like  herself  and  holds  out  to  her, — already  in  her  own 
native  city  the  apostle  of  the  poorest  of  the  poor,  of  the 
outcast  and  the  slave, — the  prospect  of  their  laboring  to¬ 
gether  to  improve  the  social  condition  of  the  country  in 
which  he  was  born.  And,  her  young  heart  filled  with  such 
God-given  hopes,  she  tears  herself  away  from  her  idolized 
parents,  her  brothers,  sisters,  home,  and  the  many  hearts 
her  charities  had  bound  to  her, — to  labor  in  the  far-off  field 
where  there  is  no  apostle  to  aid,  to  direct,  or  to  encourage 
her. 

In  her  new  home  the  magnetism  of  her  presence  draws  to 
her  every  member  of  her  new  family,  and  their  numerous 
dependants  ;  the  children  and  the  poor  have  soon  found  her 
out,  and  thenceforward  continue  to  besiege  her.  The  im¬ 
pression  made  by  her  charming  manners  is  more  than  con¬ 
firmed  by  the  first  song  she  sings.  Have  we  not  read  in 
youth  of  the  famous  Thessalian  who  sang  so  divinely  that 
the  very  wild  beasts  trooped  after  him  from  mountain  and 
forest?  But  it  was  not  merely  the  untutored  and  sadly 
neglected  Indians  and  half-breeds  who  would  crowd  to  the, 
till  then,  forsaken  church  when  she  woke  the  organ  and 
poured  forth  her  magnificent  voice  in  prayer  and  praise ; 
but,  from  far  and  near  the  best  families,  one  and  all,  would 


ELOQUENT  FACTS. 


347 


come  to  hear  the  little  enchantress.  For  enchantress  she 
was  by  the  magic  of  her  humility,  her  gentleness,  and  the 
ardent  love  she  felt  for  these  neglectful  and  erring  souls. 
They  came  to  see,  to  hear,  to  be  delighted,  and  went  away 
subdued,  edified,  thinking  of  better  things,  and  longing  to 
return  to  their  lovely  kinswoman  once  more. 

The  children  were  attracted, — and  a  Sunday-school  was 
soon  organized  by  the  young  missionary,  some  of  the  most 
zealous  of  the  neighboring  ladies  and  gentlemen  lending 
their  cordial  assistance.  A  choral  union  was  also  formed, 
which  comprised  the  most  distinguished  and  cultivated  in 
the  local  society,  and  its  members  were  induced  to  make  the 
Church  offices  more  solemn  and  attractive  by  their  volun¬ 
tary  services.  The  public  celebration  of  mass  was,  at  the 
time,  forbidden  to  all  priests  who  did  not  sign  the  schis- 
matical  terms  dictated  by  the  head  of  the  government ;  and 
in  consequence  many  churches  were  closed  altogether.  But 
our  little  apostle,  trusting  to  her  quality  of  an  American 
citizen,  either  evaded  the  prohibition  or  openly  defied  it, 
and  thus  succeeded  in  restoring  to  divine  worship  more 
than  its  wonted  splendor  and  a  pious  feeling  unknown  there 
since  the  days  of  the  ancient  missionaries.  Even  the  priest, 
who  had  suffered  himself  to  float  listlessly  down  the  current 
of  evil  custom,  was  recalled  to  a  sense  of  his  sacred  obliga¬ 
tions  by  the  eloquence  of  such  examples  in  one  so  young 
and  so  devoted  to  God’s  interests. 

And  so  the  hallowed  springs  of  piety  were  reopened  in 
church  and  homes  and  hearts.  The  ladies  far  and  wide  were 
enlisted  in  pious  associations  designed  to  foster  individual 
piety  and  the  virtues  of  home-life,  to  promote  the  religious 
and  secular  education  of  the  poor  and  the  instruction  of  the 
Indians,  to  care  for  the  sick  and  the  needy, — as  well  as  to 
keep  alive  the  sweet  neighborly  charities  which  had  begun  to 
revive  and  to  produce  such  incalculable  good  on  every  side. 

Without  noise  or  outward  effort  on  the  part  of  her  who 
was  the  soul  of  this  great  revival,  all  who  were  living  to¬ 
gether  in  violation  of  the  divine  law  hastened  to  repair 
the  mischief  done.  Weak  souls,  in  high  and  responsible 


348 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


position,  wlio  liad  sacrificed  conscience  in  the  hour  of  per¬ 
secution,  were  led  to  recant  their  error.  And  so  the  little 
stranger,  while  suffering  severely  from  the  dreadful  climate 
and  fulfilling  with  a  calm,  joyous  spirit  all  the  duties  of  her 
large  household,  found  time  and  means  to  urge  on  and  ac¬ 
complish  good  works  innumerable. 

Meanwhile  a  fearful  civil  war  had  broken  out,  blood  was 

•  ' 

being  daily  shed,  and  there  wTas  no  one  to  care  for  the 
wounded  and  the  sick.  Though  sick  herself,  and  having 
her  infant  daughter  to  care  for,  the  brave  little  woman  lost 
not  a  moment  in  organizing  a  band  of  nurses  ;  and,  though 
naturally  so  timid  as  not  to  be  able  to  bear  the  sight  of 
blood,  she  nerved  herself  to  follow  the  surgeons  from  suf¬ 
ferer  to  sufferer,  as  they  did  their  dreadful  work,  helping 
to  bind  up  a  shattered  limb  or  to  dress  the  festering  wounds 
of  some  poor  wretch  who  had  been  too  long  overlooked  in 
the  torrid  weather. 

It  were  needless  to  recall  the  superhuman  fatigues  of  these 
terrible  days.  God  alone  could  have  sustained  her,  for  it 
was  for  him  that  she  worked  and  to  him  she  looked  up  for 
the  needful  strength  to  endure  what  else  she  could  not  have 
borne  for  a  single  hour.  That  she  was  praised  and  blessed 
and  worshiped  by  the  townspeople,  as  well  as  by  the  sick 
and  wounded  themselves,  was  to  be  expected. 

When  death  called  her  away  from  the  labors  she  had  so 
lovingly  assumed,  there  was  a  proposal  made  to  erect,  at 
the  public  expense,  a  monument  over  that  early  grave. 
But  that  would  have  been  utterly  in  opposition  to  the  spirit 
which  had  guided  the  little  heroine,  as  well  as  to  her  own 
well-known  wishes.  Her  memory  lives  in  every  home  in 
the  land,  and  the  good  she  did  has  not  perished  with  her, 
while  one  of  her  most  cherished  hopes  has  been  realized 
since  her  death, — that  of  seeing  her  adopted  people  gov¬ 
erned  by  a  truly  apostolic  bishop. 

SOCIAL  VIRTUES  OF  AMERICAN  WOMEN. 

The  lessons  of  the  young  and  fruitful  life,  so  prematurely 
closed,  are  lessons  repeated  throughout  our  country  in  the 


THE  WO  MAH  OF  THE  WORLD  OUTSIDE  HER  HOME.  349 

north  and  south  from  the  Middle  States  to  every  portion  of 
our  territory  bounded  by  the  two  great  oceans.  W omen  to 
whom  Providence  has  given  a  superior  social  position,  women 
unmarried  as  well  as  married,  feel  the  responsibilities  of  their 
rank,  and  devote  themselves  heartily  to  the  good  works  with¬ 
in  their  reach  ;  and  they  have  met  with  a  most  generous  co¬ 
operation  from  their  less  favored  but  no  less  devoted  sisters. 
It  is  a  matter  of  notoriety  that  the  foundation  and  support 
of  our  numerous  and  splendid  establishments  of  charity 
and  education,  without  mentioning  the  churches  themselves, 
are  chiefly  due  to  the  self-sacrificing  zeal  of  women  of  posi¬ 
tion  in  each  community,  heartily  sustained  by  the  wives  and 
daughters  of  the  tradesman  and  the  mechanic,  by  the  ex¬ 
haustless  charity  of  our  unmarried  laboring  women, — shop¬ 
girls,  factory-girls,  and  house-servants.  God  alone  knows 
and  he  alone  can  adequately  reward  the  toil,  the  hardship, 
the  humiliations,  the  sacrifices  of  time,  money,  health,  and 
self-love  which  the  women  of  every  Catholic  congregation 
within  the  land  have  had  and  still  have  to  face,  year  after 
year,  in  their  joint  industries  and  endeavors  for  the  support 
of  church,  schools,  convents,  asylums,  hospitals,  and  other 
local  charities. 

WORK  OF  THE  WOMAN  OF  THE  WrORLD  OUTSIDE  OF  HER 

HOME. 

With  all  these  the  woman  of  the  world  has  to  become 
acquainted ;  an  interest  in  them  is  as  much  her  own  inter¬ 
est  as  the  education  of  her  children  or  the  well-being  of  her 
household.  Who  does  not  know  that  in  France  the  mag¬ 
nificent  Society  of  the  Propagation  of  the  Faith,  with  the 
millions  raised  annually,  penny  by  penny,  from  poor  and 
rich  alike,  with  the  fruitful  missions  founded  and  sustained 
in  both  hemispheres, — on  every  point  of  the  English-speak¬ 
ing  world  as  well  as  among  the  heathen, — is  mainly  the 
work  of  French  women?  And  so  is  the  “ Association  of 
the  Holy  Infancy,”  founded  by  the  chivalrous  He  Forbin~ 
Janson,  Bishop  of  Nancy,  and  which  yearly  rescues  from 


350 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


death  so  many  heathen  infants  in  China,  and  provides  for 
their  education?  These  are  only  two  of  the  great  works 
carried  on  in  France  by  women  of  the  world.  Their  sisters 
in  Canada  do  not  belie  this  well-earned  reputation.  One 
has  only  to  live  a  single  week  in  Quebec  or  Montreal  to 
feel  that  the  heart  of  woman  there  is  ever  open  to  all  the 
noblest  impulses  of  charity,  her  head  quick  to  conceive 
generous  plans,  her  tongue  ever  ready  to  plead  them,  and 
her  hand  well  practiced  in  working  for  every  form  of  dis¬ 
tress. 

woman’s  WORK  IN  ITALY  AND  GERMANY. 

We  are  not  to  believe  that  the  women  of  these  two  great 
countries  have  been  idle  lookers-on  while  their  respective 
governments  were  either  destroying  with  a  sort  of  impious 
rage  all  the  fair  and  glorious  institutions  of  eighteen  cen¬ 
turies  of  Christian  life,  or  ruthlessly  cutting  down  at  the 
very  roots  the  noble  tree  of  clerical  and  apostolic  zeal. 
Long  before  the  names  of  Bismark  or  Victor  Emmanuel 

had  come  to  be  ranked  with  those  of  a  Pombal  and  a  Hen- 

% 

ry  VIII.,  Germany  and  Austria  had  their  own  admirable 
associations  rivaling  in  efficiency  the  noblest  organizations 
of  French  religious  zeal,  while  Italy  was  covered  all  over 
with  guilds  of  women — the  highest  in  rank  and  foremost  in 
virtue — who  only  kept  up  by  their  charitable  labors  the 
traditions  of  so  many  centuries  of  ancestral  piety.  The 
breath  of  revolution — albeit  as  keen  as  the  blasts  which 
descend  from  the  glaciers  of  Monte  Rosa  on  the  vine-clad 
hills  of  Upper  Lombardy,  and  as  destructive  in  their  course 
as  a  tropical  tornado — has  neither  killed  nor  chilled  the  soul 
of  charity  in  the  women  of  Italy.  As  the  storm  grows 
louder  and  fiercer,  and  the  Radical  crisis  becomes  more  and 
more  imminent,  the  women  who,  from  the  Alps  to  the 
southernmost  cape  of  Sicily,  boast  the  blood  of  hosts  of 
canonized  saints,  display  more  courage  and  energy  in  plead¬ 
ing  the  cause  of  Religion  defamed  and  despoiled,  and  in 
providing  for  the  needs  of  the  countless  poor,  whose  in¬ 
creasing  numbers  and  sufferings  are  the  one  unquestioned 


PART  OF  TEE  WORKING-MAN’S  WIFE. 


351 


result  of  Radicalism.  Even  the  fell  persecutor  Diocletian 
was  wont  to  refer  the  distressed  Christians  of  his  empire  to 
the  charity  of  the  Roman  Pontiff,  whom  he  knew  to  be 
looked  up  to  as  the  common  parent,  and  whose  benefactions 
he  wisely  encouraged.  But  our  modern  Levelers  will  not 
allow  the  Church  or  the  priest  either  the  right  or  the  means 
to  relieve  the  poor  or  to  comfort  the  distressed.  And  so  to 
Catholic  women  alone  is  left  the  divine  mission  and  minis¬ 
try  of  seeking  out  Lazarus  at  the  gate  of  Csesarism  or  Radi¬ 
calism, — where  even  the  dogs  are  not  allowed  to  lick  the 
sufferer’ s  sores.  To  them  it  is  given  and  permitted  to  raise 
him  up,  and  house  him,  and  feed  him,  and  to  prepare  his 
soul  for  that  eternal  repose  where  all  wrongs  are  righted 
and  all  the  ills  of  time  most  amply  compensated. 

Bismark  may  succeed  in  imprisoning  or  banishing  the 
last  faithful  bishop  and  priest  in  the  German  Empire, — but 
he  can  neither  banish  nor  imprison  the  zeal  and  heroic  de¬ 
votedness  of  German  womanhood.  Victor  Emmanuel,  or 

*  S 

the  Mazzinian  Radicals  who  misgovern  Italy  in  his  name, 
may  suppress  the  last  monastery  and  convent,  and  seques¬ 
trate  the  last  remnant  of  the  once  magnificent  patrimony  of 
the  poor ;  but  the  spirit  of  St.  Catherine  of  Sienna  and  St. 
Frances  of  Rome  cannot  be  suppressed  ;  the  generous  piety 
which  the  Deacon  St.  Lawrence  inherited  from  his  Chris¬ 
tian  mother  will  defy  all  the  edicts  of  the  Italian  parlia¬ 
ment  and  outlive  not  only  Victor  Emmanuel  and  his  dy¬ 
nasty,  but  the  last  representative  of  Young  Italy  and  the 
Revolution. 

Let  our  readers  only  peruse  the  accounts  which  reach  us 
of  the  noble  doings  of  Italian,  Swiss,  and  German  women, 
and  they  must  be  convinced  that  we  have  not  exaggerated 
the  importance  of  woman’s  social  duties  and  social  mission 
at  the  present  time  and  in  every  Christian  land. 

PAKT  OF  THE  WORKING-MAN’S  WIFE. 

But  have  we  not, — it  may  be  suggested, — left  the  woman 
of  the  laboring  classes  a  very  unimportant  part  to  play  in 


352 


TIIE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


social  life,  and  in  tlie  discharge  of  what  we  have  termed 
“  social  duties  ”  % 

By  no  means.  The  advice  so  frequently  given,  and  the 
rules  addressed  to  women  of  these  classes  in  the  preceding 
chapters  will  teach  them  how  to  make  of  their  own  homes 
so  many  schools  of  “the  Gentle  Life,”  of  their  sons  and 
daughters  apt  and  accomplished  scholars  in  the  true  cour¬ 
tesies  and  graces  of  society, — how  to  make  their  evenings  at 
home  most  delightful,  entertaining,  elevating,  and  refining 
to  their  own  as  well  as  to  the  guests  attracted  to  their  fire¬ 
side  by  this  twofold  charm  of  refinement  and  bright  cheer¬ 
fulness.  The  pleasures, — pure,  heartfelt,  ever  fresh  and  wel¬ 
come, — which  the  good  wife  of  the  laboring  man  is  as  care¬ 
ful  to  provide  each  evening  for  her  dear  ones,  as  she  is  to 
prepare  them  a  wholesome  and  plentiful  meal, — will  encour¬ 
age  others  of  her  neighbors  and  acquaintance  to  follow  her 
example.  And  thus  there  will  be  other  firesides,  regulated 
in  all  things  on  her  own  pattern,  which  will  be  a  safe  and 
welcome  place  of  enjoyment  for  herself  and  her  children.  To 
such  alone  ought  she  and  they  to  go. 

Are  such  homes  as  these  very  rare  among  our  people  % 
No,  thanks  to  God’s  fatherly  care  over  them  ;  and  all  due 
praise  be  to  the  wisdom  and  piety  of  so  many  true  women 
well  known  to  their  religious  guides,  and  better  known  still 
to  all  of  their  own  class  who  love  true  goodness  ! 

HOW  THE  GOOD  AEE  DEAWIST  TOGETHEE. 

For,  there  is  an  occult  freemasonry  among  the  good, 
among  those  who  truly  live  as  becomes  children  of  God, 
just  as  there  is  among  worldlings.  They  find  each  other 
out  in  a  neighborhood,  they  are  drawn  to  each  other  in  a 
crowd,  their  lives  seem  to  be  governed  by  the  laws  of  a 
“  supernatural  selection,”  which  unconsciously  and  irresis¬ 
tibly  throws  them  together.  Have  the  good  angels  any¬ 
thing  to  do  with  this  %  Most  certainly. 

Cast  a  handful  of  gold  dust  into  a  vessel  full  of  coarse 
sand,  and  shake  it, — if  presently  you  seek  for  the  shining 


HOW  THE  GOOD  ARE  DRAWN  TOGETHER. 


353 


speckles  of  the  precious  metal,  you  find  them  not, — they 
have  sunk  to  the  bottom,  and  there  they  cluster  together. 
Nay,  place  the  vessel  on  some  place  where  it  may  be 
heated  slowly,  without  melting  the  golden  particles,  and 
after  a  time  the  mysterious  laws  of  affinity  will  draw  them 
together,  separating  them  from  the  earthy  mass,  and  im¬ 
pelling  them  downward,  away  from  the  surface.  Again, 
watch  a  flower  garden  in  springtide,  when  your  plants  are 
in  full  blossom ;  you  will  not  find  the  bee  and  the  wasp 
sucking  the  same  flower.  The  bee  seeks  the  honey  to  bear 
it  home  to  the  hive,  fasting  and  toiling  herself  the  while ; 
she  is  thinking  of  others  while  she  is  abroad  and  seeking 
the  loveliest  and  most  fragrant  daughters  of  the  spring ; 
and  she  hastens  homeward  laden  with  her  treasures,  only 
to  hoard  them  up  for  her  sisters  during  the  long  winter 
months.  On  the  contrary,  the  wasp  seeks  the  honey  to  en¬ 
joy  it.  Unselfish,  unworldly,  and  motherly  women  are  like 
the  bees ;  they  go  abroad  to  make  honey  for  their  dear 
ones,  not  for  the  purpose  of  gratifying  their  appetite,  like 
the  wasp,  or  of  displaying  their  beautiful  wings,  like  the 
butterfly  ;  and  God  gives  them  the  instinct  of  knowing 
each  other  and  trooping  together,  while  they  work  with 
one  accord  and  untiringly,  as  long  as  the  day  lasts,  to  trea¬ 
sure  up  sweet  stores  of  enjoyment  for  others.  Wasps,  like 
selfish  and  pleasure-seeking  people,  also  know  each  other  ; 
but  they  do' not  work  well  together, — they  quarrel  and  sting 
each  other  to  death,  or  victimize  some  innocent,  harmless 
bee,  because  it  incautiously  seeks  the  same  flowering  shrub 
with  themselves. 

Even  so  will  true-hearted  women,  guided  by  the  divine 
instinct  within  them,  seek  each  other’ s  society  to  encourage 
each  other  in  living  godly  lives,  to  learn  how  they  can  im¬ 
prove  their  methods  of  educating  their  dear  ones  and  of 
brightening  their  homes,  as  well  as  to  plan  means  for  reliev¬ 
ing  the  poor,  for  providing  for  the  needs  of  a  church  in 
debt,  or  of  saving  from  want,  temptation,  and  ruin  the 
youthful  and  destitute  of  their  own  sex. 

Oh  !  blessed  shall  be  the  day  when,  in  this  great  city  of 
23 


354 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


* 


New  York,  we  shall  see  such  women  as  these  forming  asso¬ 
ciations  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  innocent  and  inex¬ 
perienced  girls  arriving  on  our  shores,  from  the  many  snares 
set  for  them  by  fiends  of  their  own  sex,  and  by  men  who 
can  never  have  known  a  mother !  There  has  always  ex¬ 
isted  in  Catholic  Italy  associations  of  this  sort,  which  pro¬ 
vided  asylums  for  the  homeless  and  unprotected,  where 
they  could  learn  trades  and  work  for  their  own  benefit  till 
they  found  a  suitable  match ;  then  the  association  added  to 
the  little  store  laid  up  by  the  bride,  and  thus  secured  her  a 
handsome  marriage  portion.  Moreover,  it  has  been  the  im¬ 
memorial  custom  for  sovereigns,  for  popes,  for  noble  ladies 
of  every  degree  to  bestow  yearly,  on  certain  feast-days,  a 
dower  on  a  number  of  poor  but  portionless  girls.  This 
was  often  done  by  noble  ladies  on  the  day  of  their  own 
bridals,  or  on  some  such  joyous  occasion,  or  in  thanks¬ 
giving  for  some  great  favor  from  on  high. 

We  dare  not  make  a  suggestion.  These  lines  may  inspire 
some  generous  womanly  heart  with  a  noble  emulation  of 
the  charities  of  other  lands. 

In  our  own  there  are  surely  souls  ready  to  respond  to 
every  breath  of  the  divine  inspiration.  For  we  have  in  our 
midst  women  of  the  world  who  seem  to  have  no  other  occu¬ 
pation  but  that  of  benefiting  others, — women  who  give  up 
every  pleasure  to  open  homes  for  the  young  and  houseless 
of  their  own  sex.  What  though  their  labors  do  not  always 
prosper  as  they  wish  \  or  though  men  do  not  praise  or  be¬ 
friend  their  efforts  ?  Is  He  for  whom  they  work  blind  or 
forgetful  or  ungrateful  ? 

Generous  women,  whoever  you  be,  forget  not  that  you 
labor  for  the  eternal  God,  and  that  your  reward,  is  not 
to  be  enjoyed  on  this  side  of  eternity.  To  all  of  you,  be¬ 
ing  what  you  are,  we  would  fain  commend  these  lines  on 
“  Hoarded  Joys,”  should  you  be  tempted  to  repine  at  the 
slowness  with  which  either  success  or  repose  cometh  for 
you: 


HOW  THE  GOOD  ARE  DRAWN  TOGETHER.  355 

**  I  said  :  *  Nay,  pluck  not, — let  tlie  first  fruit  be  : 

Even  as  tliou  sayest,  it  is  sweet  and  red  ; 

But  let  it  ripen  still.  The  tree’s  bent  bead 
Sees  in  tbe  stream  its  own  fecundity 
And  bides  tbe  day  of  fullness.  Shall  not  we 
At  tbe  sun’s  bour  that  day  possess  tbe  shade. 

And  claim  our  fruit  before  its  ripeness  fade, 

And  eat  it  from  tbe  branch,  and  praise  tbe  tree  ?  ’  ” 

But  to  the  worldly  women,  who,  born  of  Christian  mo¬ 
thers  and  reared  to  the  knowledge  and  practice  of  better 
things,  allow  the  spring  and  summer  of  life  to  pass  away 
without  a  single  flower  or  fruit  of  ripened  goodness  for 
themselves  or  others, — what  shall  we  say  ?  They  have 
resolved,  and  resolved,  and  resolved,  and  not  one  resolu¬ 
tion  has  ever  ripened  into  performance.  Their  virtues  are 
like  the  fruits  buried  long  centuries  ago  in  the  royal  sepul¬ 
chres  of  Egypt :  they  fall  to  dust  on  being  brought  to  the 
sunlight. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


MAIDENHOOD. 

Unto  God’s  will  slie  brought  devout  respect. 

Profound  simplicity  of  intellect, 

And  supreme  patience.  From  her  mother’s  knee 
Faithful  and  hopeful ;  wise  in  charity  ; 

Strong  in  grave  peace  ;  in  pity  circumspect. 

So  held  she  through  her  girlhood  ;  as  it  were 
An  angel- watered  lily,  that  near  G  od 
Grows  and  is  quiet. 

Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 

Mind’st  thou  not  (when  the  twilight  gone 
Left  darkness  in  the  house  of  John), 

Between  the  naked  window-bars 
That  spacious  vigil  of  the  stars  ? 

For  thou,  a  watcher  even  as  they, 

Would’st  rise  from  where  throughout  the  day 
Thou  wroughtest  raiment  for  His  poor  ; 

And,  finding  the  fixed  terms  endure 
Of  day  and  night  which  never  brought 
Sounds  of  His  coming  chariot, 

Would’st  lift  through  cloud- waste  unexplored 
Those  eyes  which  said,  “  How  long,  O  Lord  ?  ” 

The  same. 

GIRLHOOD  OF  THE  VIRGIN-MOTHER  THE  MODEL  OF 

MAIDENHOOD. 

The  virtues  and  qualities  which  the  poet  attributes  to 
Mary  in  her  girlhood,  are  those  which  every  Christian 
mother  will  endeavor  to  develop  in  her  daughters :  the 
deep-seated  piety  that  makes  conformity  to  the  divine  will 

356 


MARY’S  PUBLIC  LIFE. 


357 


the  first  and  last  study  of  every  hour  and  day  and  year,  till 
the  vail  is  removed  and  the  dutiful  soul  beholds  face  to 
face  Him  who  through  all  eternity  will  study  to  fulfill  her 
will;— the  “profound  simplicity  of  intellect”  which  is  but 
the  illumined  eye  of  faith  beholding  God  first  and  last  and 
middlemost  in  all  this  wondrous  world  and  in  the  compli¬ 
cated  course  of  human  history; — the  “supreme  patience” 
which  springs  from  the  certain  hope  that  such  faith  begets, 
and  makes  the  trials  of  time  seem  as  nought  compared  with 
the  eternal  possesion  already  begun  in  faith  ; — these  twin 
virtues  of  Faith  and  Hope,  like  the  wings  of  the  soul,  lift¬ 
ing  the  maiden  to  the  divine  bosom  even  “from  her  mo¬ 
ther’s  knee  ;  ” — that  “  wisdom  in  charity”  which  consists  in 
filling  the  heart  brimful  with  the  chaste  love  of  the  Supreme 
Good,  in  order  to  pour  all  the  unselfish  devotion  it  inspires 
on  the  home  first,  and  then  on  all  outside  the  home,  ac¬ 
cording  to  the  enlightened  laws  of  charity ; — the  invinci¬ 
ble  fortitude  that  nerves  the  soul  to  struggle  unceasingly 
against  the  warring  desires  of  earthly  concupiscence,  while 
bearing  with  unruffled  serenity  the  ills  which  befall,  no 
matter  whence  they  come  ; — and  that  4  4  circumspect  pity  ’  ’ 
which  makes  the  soul  careful,  while  succoring  the  distress 
of  others,  and  showing  divinest  pity  to  their  most  loath¬ 
some  ills,  not  to  be  herself  defiled, — just  as  when  mercy 
leads  one  to  plunge  into  a  roaring  flood  to  save  a  poor 
drowning  wretch,  one  takes  care  not  to  be  swept  away  by 
the  swift  waters. 

With  all  this  strength  of  soul  the  Christian  maiden  must 
be  near  the  maternal  bosom  and  beneath  the  sweet  light  of 
a  mother’ s  love,  like  a  lily  within  the  close  of  some  august 
sanctuary  watered  daily  by  angelic  hands  and  growing  up 
in  gentleness  and  the  perfection  of  all  loveliness. 

mart’s  public  life  the  model  of  womanhood’s  trials. 

This  gentle  nurture  within  the  home  will  give  a  girl’ s  soul 
that  adamantine  firmness  as  well  as  purity  which  will  bear 
without  injury  the  terrible  trials  of  after-life.  Maidenhood 


358 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


had  scarcely  begun  for  the  Most  Blessed  One,  when  the 
divine  purpose  was  unfolded  to  her,  and  her  share  in  the 
Work  of  Ages  *  was  foreshown,  the  bitter  road  from  the 
Manger  to  the  Cross  ;  and  then  the  long  stay  on  earth 
after  him  in  the  house  of  John,  with  her  full  participation 
in  all  the  manifold  woes  of  the  infant  Church.  She  who 
was  the  Mother  of  the  Bridegroom, — who  had  pillowed  his 
infant  head  on  her  bosom  through  the  long  journeying,  back 
and  forth,  of  his  exile,  and  who,  at  the  foot  of  the  Cross, 
received  on  that  same  agonized  bosom  the  dear  thorn- 
crowned  head  taken  down  from  the  wood,  was  predes¬ 
tined  to  watch  over  the  birth  and  growth  of  His  Bride 
and  our  Mother. 

As  she  suffered  in  Him  when  scourged  at  the  pillar  and 
nailed  to  the  bitter  tree,  so  she  suffered  in  his  members 
during  the  first  persecutions, — was  scourged  in  Paul  and 
John,  and  beheaded  in  James,  and  stoned  in  Stephen,  being 
meanwhile  the  model  of  all  in  faith  that  never  faltered,  in 
hope  that  never  was  dimmed,  and  in  that  all-bearing  love 
which  waiteth  for  His  coming  throughout  the  interminable 
years. 

How  true  a  mirror  of  maidenhood  and  womanhood  !  How 
clearly  can  one  view  in  the  life  of  that  Mother  of  Sorrows 
the  lot  which  all  true  women  must  accept !  And  how  con¬ 
soling  for  all  these  classes  of  toilers,  sufferers,  and  waiters 
whose  trials,  labors,  duties,  and  virtues  we  are  now  going 
to  set  forth. 

I. 

THE  DAUGHTERS  OF  THE  WEALTHY  HOME. 

We  have  no  further  concern  here  with  maidens  who 
remain  beneath  the  roof  of  their  parents  till  they  have 
chosen  a  home  of  their  own  in  matrimony  or  in  religious 
life.  What  has  been  said  must  suffice  for  them,  inasmuch 
as  we  suppose  their  mothers  to  have  faithfully  discharged 


*  Habacuc  iii.  2. 


CHARACTERISTICS  OF  AMERICAN  WOMEN. 


359 


toward  them  all  the  offices  of  motherhood.  Our  present 
concern  is  with  the  daughters  of  wealthy  families,  on  whom 
poverty  has  fallen  while  still  unmarried. 

GIRLS  REARED  IN  AFFLUENCE  AND  FORCED  TO  LABOR. 

1.  We  approach  this  large  and  most  interesting  class  with  a 
feeling  of  infinite  reverence.  We  know  that  their  numbers 
have  much  increased  of  late  years  even  in  our  midst,  and 
in  spite  of  all  the  securities  which  surround  the  wealthy  in 
a  country  untroubled  by  socialism,  in  spite,  also,  of  the 
facilities  afforded  in  a  young  and  prosperous  community 
for.  recruiting  impaired  fortunes.  And  our  reverence  is 
founded  on  the  magnanimity  with  which  so  many  young 
girls,  brought  up  in  luxury  and  with  the  most  splendid  pros¬ 
pects,  accept  the  reverse  that  befalls  them,  and  set  to  work 
to  lighten  the  hard  lot  of  father  and  mother, — and,  not  un- 
frequently,  to  provide  for  the  wants  of  their  whole  family. 

RESOLUTION  AND  FORTITUDE  CHARACTERISTIC  OF  AMERICAN 

WOMEN. 

It  is  one  beautiful  feature  of  American  womanhood,  this 
resolute  facing  the  inevitable,  this  heroic  determination 
daily  manifested  of  undertaking  any  kind  of  honorable 
toil,  in  order  to  be  self-supporting  and  to  be  a  help  to  the 
dear  ones  at  home.  Men  are  born  to  be  the  providers  in  the 
home :  they  are  formed  by  nature  and  still  further  fitted  by 
education  for  every  species  of  toil.  Theirs  is  the  battle  of 
life  on  sea  and  land.  The  home  with  its  quiet,  its  obscurity, 
its  sanctities,  is  for  woman :  she  is  made  to  grow  up  in  the 
shade.  Man’s  strength  of  soul  and  body,  his  physical  and 
moral  qualities,  liken  him  to  the  mountain-oak  which  waxes 
strong  in  the  sunshine,  the  wind,  and  the  blast.  The  sturdy 
trunk,  the  rough  bark,  the  gnarled  and  wide  branches, — 
like  mighty  arms  stretched  out  to  contend  with  the  storm, — 
all  bespeak  struggle,  strength,  and  victory  over  the  elements. 
But  woman  is  like  the  lowly  vine,  which  needs  support  for 
itself  and  the  delicious  clusters  that  it  bears,  and  needs, 


360 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


too,  wh ether  in  valley  or  on  hillside,  to  be  sheltered  against 
the  tierce  cold  winds  that  may  happen  to  sweep  over  its 
native  soil. 

HEROIC  WOMEN  IN  ADVERSITY  LIKE  CHOICE  VINES  ON  A 

BARREN  SOIL. 

It  will  serve  our  purpose  to  pursue  this  comparison  a  little 
farther.  The  vines  which  bear  the  most  renowned  fruit  and 
produce  the  wine  most  eagerly  sought  for,  are  not  those  that 
grow  on  the  rich  and  sheltered  lowlands  ;  just  as  the  women 
most  admirable  for  heroic  endurance  and  perseverance  are 
those  who  have  to  grow  up  in  toil  and  trial  and  self-reliance. 
Let  us  listen  to  this  description  by  a  recent  traveler  of  the 
port-wine  district  in  Portugal : 

“  As  I  ascended  the  ridge  of  mountains  which  separates 
the  valley  of  Villa  Peal  from  the  port- wine  district,  I  be¬ 
came  entangled  in  a  network  of  paths.  .  .  .  On  either 

side  of  the  river  Douro  lies  a  district  about  twenty-seven 
miles  in  length  and  six  or  seven  in  breadth,  of  steep  hills, 
with  narrow,  ravine-like  valleys  ;  the  soil  a  naked,  yellow- 
brown,  slaty  schist.  .  .  .  Looked  at  from  where  I  now 

stood,  and  seen  in  the  thin  atmosphere  of  early  morning, 
with  every  detail  sharp  and  clear  as  in  a  photograph,  with 
hill  beyond  hill  extending  confusedly  below,  the  appearance 
was  that  of  a  wilderness  of  utterly  bare  and  arid  peak  and 
valley.  .  .  .  All  over  the  sides  of  each  acclivity  stone 

terraces  have  been  built,  in  lines  running  parallel  with  the 
horizon ;  and  in  the  poor  schistous  soil  thus  kept  from  being 
washed  away  by  the  rains  of  winter,  the  vines  which  make 
port  wine  are  grown.  ...  If  Portugal  were  to  lapse 
into  an  uninhabited  wilderness  to-morrow,  this  monument 
of  man’s  accumulated  handiwork  would  probably  outlast 
every  single  work  of  Poman,  Goth,  Saracen,  and  Portu¬ 
guese.  .  .  . 

u  The  flavor  of  the  wine  here  produced  depends  upon  the 
nature  of  the  soil,  certainly  not  upon  its  richness ;  for  the 
surface  of  the  vineyards  looks  like  the  rubbish  thrown  up 


INSTANCES  OF  THIS  SUPERIOR  VIRTUE.  361 

from  a  stone  quarry ;  and  it  depends  also  upon  the  great 
heat  of  the  summer  in  a  district  shut  off  by  lofty  hills  from 
the  north  and  the  northeast.  The  cold  of  winter  among 
these  high-lying  lands,  is,  however,  for  Portugal,  very  con¬ 
siderable  ;  snow  falls  and  lies,  even  in  the  valleys,  and  frost 
often  lasts  for  the  whole  twenty-four  hours.  This  compar¬ 
ative  cold  arrests  the  winter-growth  of  the  vine,  and  gives 
it  the  rest  which  the  plants  of  temperate  climates  require, 
and  is  probably  one  cause  of  the  superiority  of  produce  of 
these  vines  over  those  grown  in  other  parts  of  Portugal. 
.  .  .  The  upland  vine  is  less  productive,  but  makes  a 

finer  wine  than  that  grown  in  the  plain.”  * 

INSTANCES  OE  THIS  SUPERIOR  VIRTUE  DEVELOPED  IN 

ADVERSITY. 

If  ever  the  history  of  this  phase  of  American  womanhood 
is  written,  it  will  show  that  during  the  momentous  years 
which  elapsed  from  1861  to  1878,  the  severe  trials  which 
fell  on  so  many  homes  during  the  Civil  War  and  afterward, 
only  served  to  call  forth  in  our  women, — in  those  espe¬ 
cially  born  in  affluence, — qualities  worthy  of  the  highest 
admiration.  The  political  whirlwind  which  swept  over  the 
country  ruined  the  upper  classes  in  the  seceding  States, 
upset  many  solid  fortunes  in  every  portion  of  the  others, 
while  the  fearful  loss  of  life  among  both  belligerents  left 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  homes  dependent  upon  the 
sole  industry  of  women,  accustomed  till  then  to  ease  and 
luxury. 

While  men,  suddenly  stripped  of  wealth  and  thereby 
fallen  from  their  position,  or  compelled  without  due  prep¬ 
aration  to  face  the  manifold  hardships  of  a  career  they 
have  never  tried,  are  not  rarely  tempted  to  give  way  to  dis¬ 
couragement  and  intemperance, — these  noble  women,  with 
the  self-denying  fortitude  which  is  an  attribute  of  their  sex, 
offered  themselves  to  any  sort  of  remunerative  labor. 

u  i  .  .  .  .  ,  ... - — - - - — - - - - —  - -  • 


*  John  Latouche,  “  Travels  in  Portugal,”  pp.  121-123. 


362 


TIIE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


The  Federal  Government  gave  employment  to  a  few,— . 
very  few  in  comparison  with  the  number  of  applicants, 
and  fewer  still  in  comparison  with  the  claims  of  so  many 
widows,  wives,  and  mothers,  who  had  given  their  dearest  to 
the  country  in  her  need.  In  France,  after  the  desolation 
and  distress  brought  to  so  many  firesides  by  four  years  of 
slaughter, — the  Government  would  have  thrown  open  to 
these  most  deserving  women  every  position  they  could 
possibly  fill  in  the  treasury,  post-office,  and  other  depart¬ 
ments  ;  this  was  a  laudable  practice  introduced  into  the 
French  administration  long  before  1870.  The  local  State 
legislatures  among  us  should  have  urged  upon  telegraph 
and  railroad  companies  the  patriotic  necessity  of  handing 
over  to  women  the  many  posts  which  they  could  have  filled 
most  advantageously  to  the  public  service. 

It  would  have  been — it  would  be  now — an  administrative 
reform  full  of  wise  economy  and  large-minded  forethought. 
But  Congress,  at  that  epoch,  in  spite  of  all  the  noisy  pro¬ 
fessions  of  patriotism  madp  by  the  dominant  party,  cared 
as  little  for  the  economical  interests  of  the  nation  as  it  does 
at  the  present  hour,  and  held  the  most  sacred  debts  of  jus¬ 
tice  and  gratitude  toward  the  families  of  the  patriotic  dead 
or  disabled  to  be  very  cheap  in  comparison  with  the  claims 
of  the  ravenous  political  following  that  beset  the  doors  of 
every  Federal  minister,  senator,  and  representative. 

It  is  time  still  to  do  justice  to  so  many  families  reduced 
to  want  and  destitution  by  the  very  devotedness  of  their 
male  members.  And  we  raise  our  voice  here  for  the  two¬ 
fold  purpose  of  claiming  that  some  justice  be  done,  even  at 
the  eleventh  hour,  and  of  urging  on  the  attention  of  states¬ 
men  and  other  public  men  the  wdsdom  of  giving  up  to 
women,  trained  for  the  purpose,  so  many  positions  of  labor 
and  trust,  in  which  men  have  shown  so  little  of  laborious 
husbandry,  and  so  much  of  untrustworthiness. 

ADMIRABLE  CONDUCT  OF  IMPOVERISHED  AMERICAN  WOMEN. 

Much  is  known  to  the  general  public  of  the  hardships  so 
patiently  and  silently  borne  by  these  two  armies  of  Ameri- 


ADMIRABLE  CONDUCT. 


363 


can  women  impoverished  by  the  war  ;  but  that  much  is  but 
very  little  indeed  of  the  distressing  reality. 

Even  now  we  could  point  out  the  descendants  of  men  who 
filled  with  honor  the  very  highest  offices  in  our  State  and 
Federal  governments,  reduced  in  old  age  to  seek  a  preca¬ 
rious  means  of  subsistence  by  the  exercise  of  some  liberal 
or  industrial  art.  And  how  many  others  pine  in  obscurity 
and  neglect,  after  having  sought  in  vain  for  honorable  and 
lucrative  employment ! 

We  have  said  there  were  “two  armies  ”  of  such  women  : 
for  if  this  distress  is  so  widespread  and  so  deep  in  the  States 
which  remained  faithful  to  the  Union,  how  incomparably 
more  so  has  it  been  among  the  once  wealthy  classes  of  the 
South  and  Southwest !  Southern  women,  whose  every  male 
relative  fell  in  defense  of  what  they  considered  the  honor  and 
independence  of  their  homes,  had  nothing  to  expect  from 
an  administration  bitterly  hostile  to  them : — and  even  had  it 
been  possible  to  secure  them  any  portion  of  the  places  at 
the  disposal  of  the  Treasury  or  the  General  Post-Office,  they 
would  neither  have  asked  for  them  nor  accepted  them. 

Hence  the  distress  and  destitution  among  the  very  best 
classes  of  Southern  women  were,  and  are  still  in  very  many 
places,  a  something  inconceivable.  It  will  touch  their  sis¬ 
ters  at  the  North  to  know,  that,  amid  the  long  and  hopeless 
darkness  which  settled  on  these  once  bright  and  ever-lfospi- 
tible  homes,  their  mistresses  allowed  no  complaint  or  mur¬ 
mur  to  escape  them, — no  despondency  to  cast  them  down  ; 
but  with  a  firm  trust  in  God  and  a  calm  resolve  to  bear  what 
could  not  be  remedied,  they  set  themselves  to  make  thrift 
out  of  their  very  poverty,  and  to  share  generously  with 
the  many  poorer  than  themselves  all  around  the  scanty 
store  of  comfort  they  could  still  dispense.  How  many  sto¬ 
ries  have  reached  us,  from  every  point  of  the  vast  territory 
over  which  the  contending  armies  swept  successively,  of  a 
heroic  spirit  of  resignation,  and  a  regal  pride  and  generosity 
in  homes  formerly  the  centers  of  hospitality  and  refinement, 
but  now  reduced  to  bare  walls,  with  the  adjoining  planta¬ 
tions  ravaged  or  occupied  by  some  insolent  intruder  !  Wo- 


364 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


man  was  there  standing  a  queen  amid  the  ruins  of  her  once 
happy  kingdom,  but  still  a  queen,  with  loyal  hearts  to  wor¬ 
ship  her,  and  with  a  right  royal  soul  to  share  with  these  the 
unfailing  treasures  and  resources  of  a  love  that  is  only 
strengthened  by  adversity  ! 

HOW  WOMEN  AEE  OFTEN  TREATED  BY  FEDERAL  OFFICIALS. 

Before  we  offer  a  few  words  of  practical  advice  to  the  per¬ 
sons  who  are  fortunate  enough  to  obtain  positions  under 
government,  one  little  trait  will  afford  the  reader  a  glimpse 
of  the  most  unmanly  spirit  of  intrigue  and  treachery  which, 
we  fear,  is  not  altogether  a  thing  of  the  past  in  Washington 
or  in  any  of  the  great  centers  where  the  Federal  patronage 
is  extensively  felt. 

A  widow  lady,  belonging  to  one  of  our  oldest  and  most 
honored  families,  had  been  utterly  ruined  by  the  civil  war. 
She  had  five  or  six  children  absolutely  dependent  on  her 
exertions,  and,  though  highly  accomplished,  her  talents 
could  avail  her  nothing  in  a  community  where  all  her  ac¬ 
quaintance  had  been,  like  herself,  reduced  from  affluence  to 
total  indigence.  She  was  as  devout  a  Christian  as  she  was  a 
devoted  mother,  and,  after  sacrificing  every  thing  she  could 
dispose  of  to  keep  a  roof  above  her  children  and  to  provide 
them  with  needful  clothing  and  food,  she  had  recourse  in 
her  extremity  to  Him  who  is  at  once  the  protector  of  the 
widow  and  her  orphans,  and  the  inspirer  of  men’s  hearts. 
She  told  Him  in  her  prayer  that  he  must  befriend  her  in  her 
utter  need  ; — and,  trusting  in  him,  she  applied  for  a  clerk¬ 
ship  in  one  of  the  departments  of  the  capital,  and  obtained 
it,  to  the  great  surprise  of  her  friends.  The  place  thus  given 
her  was  one  of  great  trust.  She  filled  it,  as  she  would  have 
discharged  any  duty,  with  the  most  conscientious  fidelity, 
and  was  looked  up  to  by  all  the  other  officials  with  unfeigned 
and  involuntary  respect.  The  emoluments  of  her  place 
enabled  her  to  complete  the  education  of  her  children,  ap¬ 
plying  herself,  with  the  sagacity  of  a  true-hearted  mother,  to 
form  every  one  of  them  to  be  self-reliant  and  self-supporting 
in  the  future.  Besides,  as  her  salary  was  barely  sufficient 


HOW  WOMEN  ARE  TREATED  BY  FEDERAL  OFFICIALS.  305 

to  cover  the  most  necessary  expenses  for  her  household,  she 
was  advised  to  do  what  the  misery  of  the  times  forced  so 
many  of  her  class  to  do, — to  accept  a  few  select  boarders. 
One  of  the  persons  thus  admitted  into  a  family  circle  far 
above  his  own  in  social  standing,  was  an  under-secretary  in 
the  department.  He  was  charmed  at  first  with  all  he  saw’ 
in  mother  and  children,  of  goodness,  piety,  innocence,  and 
the  thousand  charms  diffused  by  that  gentle  life  which  is 
the  natural  atmosphere  of  truly  Catholic  homes. 

Like  many  other  of  the  superior  and  inferior  officers  of 
government,  this  young  man  had  his  own  “ following”  of 
needy  and  greedy  dependants.  They  had  cast  their  eyes 
on  the  very  office  filled  by  the  devoted  lady  with  whom  he 
boarded ;  and  as  she  was  connected  with  the  “  Lost  Cause” 
through  her  family,  it  needed  only  some  trumped-up  charge 
to  have  her  dismissed.  Thrown  as  this  young  man  was,  into 
the  intimacy  of  that  home,  he  could  not  but  hear  both  the 
children  and  the  friends  who  visited  them  expressing  their 
sympathy  with  the  South,  or  their  dissatisfaction  with  the 
acts  of  the  Federal  administration.  A  man  of  gentle  birth, 
and  with  the  high  honor  of  a  gentleman,  would  have  died 
rather  than  disclose  to  the  outside  world  any  of  the  secrets 
of  the  family  in  which  he  lived.  But  the  soul  of  the  under¬ 
secretary  was  not  so  highly  tempered  as  this ;  he  revealed 
not  only  what  he  had  heard,  but  much  more  than  he  had 
heard.  As  he  possessed  the  unlimited  confidence  of  his 
chief,  the  poor  lady’s  fate  was  soon  decided. 

Suddenly,  without  warning  being  given  or  any  reason  for 
the  act,  she  was  dismissed  ;  and  no  pleading  availed  to  ob¬ 
tain  an  interview  with  the  high  and  mighty  secretary.  This 
was  utter  ruin  to  the  widow  and  her  orphans.  They  were 
literally  on  the  verge  of  starvation,  suffering  from  hunger, 
when,  three  or  four  months  afterward,  chance  brought  to 
Washington  a  gentleman  much  esteemed  for  his  public 
worth,  but  unconnected  with  any  branch  of  government. 
His  wife  was  with  him, — high-minded,  independent,  like 
her  husband,  and  the  fervent,  fearless  advocate  of  right 
against  wrong. 


366 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Both  had  rendered  great  services  to  government  during 
the  war,  and  their  authority  was  such  as  could  not  be  set 
aside.  The  wife  was  no  sooner  informed  of  the  wrong  done 
to  the  widow  and  her  orphans,  than  she  flew  to  the  secretary, 
insisted  on  an  instant  interview,  and  set  before  him  in  the 
clearest  light  the  wrong  which  had  been  done  under  his 
name,  and  which  had  not,  in  fact,  a  shadow  of  justification. 
The  order  for  dismissal  was  immediately  canceled,  and  the 
under-secretary  was  directed  to  reinstate  the  widow  in  her 
former  office.  He,  however,  trusting  to  the  speedy  return  to 
New  York  of  the  enemy  who  had  discovered  and  denounced 
his  treachery,  deferred  from  week  to  week  the  execution  of 
his  chiefs  instructions,  keeping  the  latter  meanwhile  in 
complete  ignorance  of  his  disobedience,  and  watching  inces¬ 
santly  the  approach  to  the  secretary’s  door,  lest  a  second 
visit  should  disclose  his  delinquency. 

Meanwhile  the  poor  widow  was  almost  driven  to  despair. 
Day  after  day  she  had  to  stint  herself  and  her  children, 
doling  out  to  them  what  was  barely  sufficient  to  keep  them 
alive.  While  in  this  condition  she  heard  that  her  benefac¬ 
tress  was  still  in  Washington,  nerved  herself  to  go  to  her 
hotel,  and  gasped  out  her  tale  of  woe. 

There  was  not  a  moment  to  be  lost.  Her  friend,  leaving 
the  sufferer  in  her  own  room,  after  ordering  her  refreshment 
and  giving  her  means  to  provide  her  children  with  tempo¬ 
rary  relief,  went  forthwith  to  the  secretary.  She  found  his 
aid  watchful  at  the  door  and  determined  that  she  should 
not  go  in.  But  she  walked  calmly  by  him  into  his  chief  s 
presence  and  related  what  had  occurred.  This  time  dis¬ 
obedience  was  out  of  the  question.  The  widow  was  re¬ 
instated  that  very  day,  and  held  the  office  till  her  latest 
hour. 

But  she  was  careful  thereafter  to  avoid  any  sort  of 
intimacy  or  social  intercourse  with  the  government  offi¬ 
cials. 

And  this  is  the  first  advice  we  give  to  you,  ladies,  no 
matter  what  may  be  the  position  you  occupy  in  any  depart¬ 
ment  of  the  administration. 


EXPECT  TO  LOSE  TOUR  POSITION  IN  SOCIETY.  367 


HOLD  NO  COMMUNICATION  WITH  OTHER  OFFICIALS. 

There  is  a  twofold  reason  for  this,  of  which  one  must  be 
apparent  from  the  facts  just  related.  The  other  is  that  one 
does  not  always  wish  to  form  an  acquaintance  with  the 
motley  crowd  whom  political  intrigue  and  influence  obtrude 
into  responsible  offices  under  government.  To  be  civil  and 
obliging  to  all,  is  proper  and  politic  ;  to  be  familiar  and 
open  to  all,  is  most  imprudent,  if  not  most  improper  in  per¬ 
sons  of  your  sex.  We  suppose  you  to  be  true  Christians 
and  true  women ;  then  respect  yourselves  infinitely,  and 
others  will  ever  show  you  infinite  respect.  With  that,  be 
most  scrupulously  exact  in  the  performance  of  every  part 
of  your  duty,  and  thus  you  will  avoid  all  cause  of  blame  or 
suspicion.  There  is  another  reason  for  the  extreme  and  re¬ 
ligious  reserve  of  which  you  must  make  a  cardinal  rule  ; 
and  that  is  the  evil  report  which  of  late  years  has  gone 
abroad  from  more  than  one  department  of  government 
about  the  relations  between  high  officials  and  their  female 
subordinates.  Necessity, — a  sad  and  sore  one, — compels 
you  to  seek  and  accept  positions  which  may  have  been  dis¬ 
honored.  The  atmosphere  of  reserve,  modesty,  self-respect, 
and  womanly  dignity,  which  you  will  bring  there  with  you, 
will  honor  the  office  as  well  as  yourself. 

EXPECT  TO  LOSE  TEMPORARILY  YOUR  OWN  POSITION  IN 

* 

SOCIETY. 

For  the  reason  last  mentioned,  and  for  others,  you  will 
be  tabooed  by  many  of  your  former  acquaintance, — by  the 
vain,  the  light,  the  worldly-minded  especially,  by  some 
very  estimable  persons,  who  are  carried  away  by  the  cur¬ 
rent  of  general  custom  because  they  have  no  weight  of 
character  or  independence  of  their  own  ;  but  not  by  the 
good  and  truly  noble  who  know  you,  appreciate  your  mo¬ 
tives  of  self-sacrifice,  and  honor  you  so  much  more  for  the 
obloquy  you  undergo  perforce  ;  most  certainly  not  by  your 
religious  guides.  .  .  . 


368  THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 

The  comfort  of  a  fatherly  word  from  these  will  be  one 
of  your  needs  during  this  period  of  labor  and  humiliation  : 
fear  not,  God  will  know  to  place  on  priestly  lips  the  very 
words  that  will  light  up  the  gloom  in  your  soul  and  make  you 
feel  sure  that  your  trials  are  only  rendering  you  more  dear 
to  the  heart  in  whose  depths  of  tender  compassionateness 
is  all  our  sufficiency. 

Amid  your  clerical  duties  do  not  neglect  either  your  own 
cherished  devotional  exercises  and  pious  reading,  nor  the 
other  studies  favorable  to  a  higher  culture.  Do  not  “let 
yourself  down”  to  the  level  of  the  common  herd,  because 
you  have  to  consort  with  them  for  the  time  being.  Your 
exercises  of  piety  will  always  help  to  lift  you  up  higher  and 
higher ;  and  the  studies  which  contribute  to  refine  and 
elevate  will  be  a  delight  to  you  amid  the  depressing  and  in¬ 
tolerable  monotony  of  office-life. 

Above  all  things, — if  your  health  and  time  in  any  way 
permit, 

HEAR  MASS  DAILY. 

We  have  seen*  that,  among  the  rules  which  every  Chris¬ 
tian  knight  had  to  observe  faithfully,  the  very  first  was, 
“with  pious  remembrance,  every  day  to  hear  the  mass  of 
God’s  passion.”  If  this  was  a  sworn  observance  of  every 
gentle  knight,  how  much  more  so  was  it  and  ought  it  ever 
to  be  of  every  true  and  gentle  lady  \  In  the  dear  old  city 
of  Quebec,  where  the  writer  was  brought  up  from  early  boy¬ 
hood  to  manhood,  one  of  his  most  vivid  recollections  is  the 
sound  of  the  cathedral  bell  calling  the  working  people, — 
the  market  folk  particularly,  who  are  very  early  risers, — to 
mass  at  four  o’clock  every  morning  of  the  year.  And  he 
who  took  on  himself  the  duty  of  being  thus  ever  ready  at 
the  altar  of  the  Lamb  each  morning  was  the  most  venerable 
and  most  learned  man  among  the  entire  clergy  of  Canada. 

Later,  when  many  years  a  priest  himself,  the  author 


*  Chapter  XV.,  Part  II.,  p.  270. 


HEAR  MASS  DAILY. 


369 


remembers  being  touched  to  the  depths  of  his  sonl  by  the 
simple  and  heroic  piety  of  a  poor  servant  girl,  who,  from 
year’s  end  to  year’s  end,  never  could  retire  before  mid¬ 
night,  and  “  who  had  made  a  pact  with  her  Guardian  Angel 
to  wake  her  up  daily  in  time  for  the  first  mass”  at  the 
Church  of  St.  Francis  Xavier.  Everywhere  in  Catholic 
countries  it  is  the  custom  to  ring  the  Angelus  bell  so  early 
that  workmen  of  every  description  may  have  time  to  as¬ 
sist  at  the  Adorable  Sacrifice  before  attending  to  their  daily 
labor  in  house  or  field.  Thus,  if  you  chance  to  be  pass¬ 
ing  up  the  Rhone  valley  in  June  or  July,  you  will  see  at 
the  first  sound  of  the  Angelus  bell  all  who  are  not  already 
in  the  village  church  hastening  thither,  taking  with  them 
their  implements  of  labor,  which  they  leave  outside  in  the 
porch  before  entering  the  sacred  precincts.  Shall  we,  in 
this  Xew  World,  where  we  are  so  free  and  so  encouraged 
to  plant  and  cultivate  the  loveliest  flowers  of  Catholic  piety, 
shall  we  not  delight  in  sanctifying  our  daily  toil  after  the 
manner  of  our  forefathers  %  And  will  your  own  consciences, 
oh  Christian  women  and  maidens !  not  upbraid  you  with 
the  neglect  of  such  mighty  graces  as  are  thus  daily  within 
your  reach  ? 

“  Ah,  wasteful  woman  !  .  . 

How  given  for  naught  her  priceless  gift. 

How  spoiled  the  bread  and  spilled  the  wine. 

Which,  spent  with  due,  respective  thrift, 

Had  made  brutes  men,  and  men  divine  !  ” 


Believe  it :  the  moral  hardship  endured  in  such  occupation 
as  we  here  treat  of  needs  supernatural  strength,  and  how 
one  half-hour  spent  early  before  the  mercy-seat,  in  sweet 
communion  with  Him  who  is  the  bread  of  life,  and  whose 
blood  applied  to  us  in  the  sacrament  intoxicates  like  wine 
and  lifts  us  above  ourselves,  will  send  us  forth  filled  with 
an  energy  and  a  joy  all  divine  to  brave  every  thing  and 
undergo  every  thing  for  his  dear  sake !  Be  the  superna¬ 
tural  woman  in  your  present  trial ;  be  a  true  child  of  God, — 
and  he  will  be  with  you  ! 

24 


370 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


LADY  COMPANIONS  AND  GOVERNESSES. 

2.  Although  we  did  not  expressly  mention  this  most 
interesting  and  deserving  class  of  ladies,  when  instructing 
the  mistress  of  the  home  in  her  duties  toward  her  children 
and  dependants,  we  meant  that  all  that  is  said  in  various 
places  *  should  apply  in  a  special  manner  to  those  whom 
she  associates  with  herself  as  a  companion,  friend,  and 
adviser,  or  as  an  assistant  in  educating  her  children. 

The  lot  of  most  governesses  is  a  hard  one ;  but,  neverthe¬ 
less,  it  is  far  preferable  to  that  of  the  very  uncomfortable 
person  known  as  a  lady  companion.  A  governess  has  work 
to  do,  hard  work  very  often,  and  oftener  still  most  miserably 
requited.  But  her  very  hard  work  is  her  salvation  from 
discouragement  and  despair.  A  lady  companion,  generally, 
has  no  defined  position  in  the  family,  no  definite  duties  to 
perform,  no  set  work  at  certain  hours  to  which  she  can  give 
her  whole  heart  and  mind,  — forgetful  of  all  else,  for  the 
present  hour,  but  of  the  pleasure  of  doing  work  and  good 
work  on  souls  or  for  souls  in  his  honor  who  is  the  passion¬ 
ate  lover  of  souls. 

A  lady  companion  for  the  most  part  is  a  kind  of  slave  to 
the  caprices  of  an  aged,  infirm,  and  whimsical  person, — tied 
down  to  every  caprice  of  her  selfish  old  tyrant,  unable  to 
apply  herself  to  any  improving  or  congenial  occupation,  and 
continually  humiliated  by  the  neglect  of  the  family  or  the 
petty  insults  of  the  domestics,  unable  to  resent  either  the 
odious  pride  and  uncharitableness  of  the  former  or  the 
studied  insolence  of  the  latter. 

Happy  the  sensitive  soul,  born  to  better  fortunes,  often 
born  in  a  sphere  far  superior  to  that  of  her  present  em¬ 
ployers, — who  chances  to  fall  on  a  truly  noble-minded  and 
large-hearted  Christian  woman  !  For  there  are  many  Chris¬ 
tian  women  whose  little  minds  and  selfish  narrow  hearts,  in 
spite  of  their  long  profession  and  practice  of  a  certain  kind 

*  Chapter  VII.,  pp.  81,  102,  103  ;  Chapter  XIII.,  pp.  205,  236,  237  ;  Chapter 
XVI.,  Part  II. 


ADVICE  TO  LADY  COMPANIONS. 


371 


of  piety,  would  justify  the  very  common  belief, — that  they 
were  as  surely  born  with  an  intellect  as  narrow  as  a  lin¬ 
net’s,  or  a  heart  as  small  as  a  mouse’s,  as  some  people  are 
born  stone-blind  or  deprived  of  arms  and  legs.  No  educa¬ 
tion  (but  such  women  cannot  have  been  educated !)  seems 
to  have  enlarged  their  very  small  notions  of  things,  and  no 
practice  of  devotion  has  made  a  place  in  their  hearts  for 
any  thing  but  their  little  self. 

ADVICE  TO  LADY  COMPANIONS. 

But  no  matter  what  may  be  the  rank  of  the  family  in 
which  a  lady  companion  is  admitted, — from  royalty  down 
to  the  latest  fortune, — she  who  resolves  to  accept  such  a 
position  must  expect  to  find  it  one  of  the  most  irksome  ser¬ 
vitude.  For  one  elevated  and  religious  womanly  soul  who 
will  treat  a  companion  with  the  respect  due  to  gentle  birth 
and  breeding  and  the  delicate  considerateness  due  to  mis¬ 
fortune,  there  will  be  found  ten  unwomanly  natures  who 
will  think  it  is  due  to  their  own  place  and  importance  to 
make  a  dependant  feel  her  inferiority  at  every  moment  of 
the  day  and  night.  Where  there  is  great  intellectual  cul¬ 
ture  united  to  solid  piety,  there  is  little  to  fear  of  the  con¬ 
stant  humiliations  inflicted  by  those  who  are  conscious  of 
no  superiority  but  that  of  rank  or  riches.  True  piety  is 
always  humble,  charitable,  considerate,  kind,  and  cour¬ 
teous.  Happy  the  young  lady  who  becomes  the  companion 
of  such  a  one  !  She  will  find  motherly  care  in  one  who  is 
her  elder,  and  a  true  sisterly  friendship  in  one  of  her  own 
years. 

But  this  is  a  rare  case ;  and  when  it  happens,  the  fortu¬ 
nate  companion  has  only  one  rule  to  follow, — to  devote  her¬ 
self,  heart  and  mind,  to  the  comfort  and  interests  of  one 
fitted  to  appreciate  every  gift  of  mind  and  heart. 

God,  in  his  admirable  ways,  has  a  most  important  mission 
for  lady  companions, — and  that  mission  is  most  remarkable 
in  our  own  days.  Numberless  families  in  countries  where 
unbelief  or  skepticism  is  general,  have  been  enlightened  and 


372 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


converted  by  the  agency  of  a  pious,  high-principled,  and 
cultivated  lady  forced  by  circumstances  to  accept  the  posi¬ 
tion  of  companion  to  the  mistress  of  the  house.  This  oc¬ 
curs  not  unfrequently  among  ourselves.  But  it  is  of  still 
more  frequent  occurrence  in  England  and  on  the  European 
continent.  While  in  France  we  heard  instances  quoted  of 
most  remarkable  conversions  effected  among  the  Russian 
nobility  by  persons  thus  selected  for  their  goodness  and 
accomplishments  to  serve  as  lady  companions  in  great  fami¬ 
lies.  One,  however,  which  happened  in  France  itself,  and 
which  resulted  in  making  most  fervent  Christians  of  an 
entire  family  given  over  to  unbelief,  may  serve  to  show 
both  what  a  thoroughly  good  lady  companion  can  do  by 
example  and  teaching,  and  what  is  expected  that  a  true 
woman,  well-bred,  refined,  and  alive  to  the  claims  of  hos¬ 
pitality  should  do  in  all  cases. 

Though  some  readers  may  fancy  the  good  fortune  of  the 
young  lady  here  mentioned  to  be  an  ideal,  or,  at  least,  an 
exceptional  case, — it  is  certainly  to  our  own  knowledge  not 
so  rare.  Let  it,  however,  serve  as  a  mirror  for  ladies  blessed 
by  fortune  and  in  a  position  to  befriend  a  class  of  persons 
most  deserving  of  all  their  tenderest  and  most  delicate  sym¬ 
pathy.  We  shall  see  afterward  the  “  reverse  of  the  medal.” 

TEUE  KINDNESS  EEWAEDED  BY  HEEOIC  DEVOTION. 

While  the  so-called  “Tractarian  Movement”  was  at  its 
height  about  1840,  an  aged  English  gentleman  with  his  only 
daughter,  a  lovely  girl  of  nineteen,  had  sought  during  the 
winter  months  the  mild  climate  of  Southern  France,  with 
the  vain  hope  of  staying  the  approach  of  death.  He  was  of 
a  good  family,  of  cultivated  mind  and  refined  taste,  deeply 
interested  in  the  controversy  then  agitating  the  English 
universities,  and  looking  forward  with  an  earnest  longing 
to  the  day  when  the  churches  of  W estern  Europe  would  be 
again  one  in  faith  and  communion.  Some  years  before, 
while  seeking  health  among  the  valleys  of  Tuscany  and 
Umbria,  he  had  been  fortunate  in  forming  an  intimate 


TRUE  KINDNESS  REWARDED  BY  HEROIC  DEVOTION  373 

acquaintance  with  a  noble  and  ancient  family  in  which  deep 
faith  and  practical  piety  went  hand  in  hand.  The  English¬ 
man’s  intellectual  objections  against  the  Church  of  Rome 
were  met  with  masterly  skill  by  the  amiable  and  accom¬ 
plished  head  of  the  house, — and  his  inveterate  prejudices 
concerning  Roman  superstitions  and  idolatry  found  an  elo¬ 
quent  refutation  in  the  lives  of  his  friend’s  wife,  children, 
and  dependants.  Frequent  and  delightful  excursions  among 
the  beautiful  villages  and  historical  sites  which  abound  in 
that  paradisaical  region,  enabled  the  invalid  to  convince 
himself  that  the  Italian  country-folk  were  solidly  virtuous, 
that  their  piety  was  any  thing  but  blind  superstition,  or 
their  attachment  to  religion  and  its  teachers  one  founded 
on  fear  and  self-interest.  He  could  not  help  contrasting  the 
comfort,  the  refinement,  the  bright  and  quick  intelligence, 
and  the  courteous  manners  of  the  mass  of  the  rural  popu¬ 
lation,  with  the  stolidity,  ignorance,  and  coarseness  of  the 
same  class  in  his  own  country. 

Still  his  convictions  only  led  him  to  see  that  there  were 
only  fewer  objections  than  he  had  fancied  toward  the  re¬ 
union  of  the  apostolic  Church  of  England  with  the  equally 
apostolic  Rome.  His  stay  in  France  afterward  did  not  tend 
to  bring  him  nearer  to  the  truth.  It  was  only  a  few  months 
before  his  end  that  the  conversion  of  his  daughter  became 
the  occasion  of  his  own.  She  had  been  a  warm  admirer  of 
the  writings  of  Keble  and  Newman.  The  sweet  songs  of 
the  “ Christian  Year”  had  been  favorites  with  her  from 
childhood ;  but  the  celebration  of  the  great  feasts  of  the 
year  in  the  beautiful  churches  of  Italy,  far  more  than  the 
festivals  of  France,  convinced  the  girl  that  the  great  Reality 
conceived  by  Keble  .was  to  be  found,  not  in  the  empty 
Anglican  liturgy,  but  in  the  time-honored  worship  of  the 
Church  of  Rome.  She  had  also  read  with  deep  interest 
Newman’s  beautiful  sketches  of  the  early  Fathers,  and  of 
their  love  of  monastic  life.  She  found  in  France  as  well  as 
in  Italy  religious  communities  of  men  and  women  whose 
life  was  in  perfect  conformity  with  the  pictures  contained 
in  the  writings  of  St.  Ambrose,  St.  Jerome,  St.  John  Chry- 


374 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


sostom,  and  St.  Basil.  Father  and  daughter  compared  their 
impressions  and  their  difficulties  :  she  besought  and  ob¬ 
tained  permission  to  be  received  into  the  Catholic  Church, 
and  her  rapt  hapjnness  on  the  day  of  her  first  communion 
so  powerfully  moved  the  parent,  that  ten  days  afterward 
the  same  happiness  was  his  own.  Thenceforward  till  his 
peaceful  end  came,  the  bliss  of  both  was  only  clouded  by 
the  grief  of  the  approaching  separation,  and  the  thought  on 
the  dying  father’s  mind  that  he  left  his  child  totally  un¬ 
provided  for. 

The  estates  which  he  owned  were  entailed,  and,  as  he  had 
no  sons,  they  descended  to  his  nephew,  a  Low  Churchman, 
to  whose  mind  both  the  deceased  and  his  child  were  the 
worst  kind  of  apostates.  She  was  informed,  a  few  days 
after  her  father’ s  burial,  that  her  family  had  entirely  cast 
her  off,  and  that  she  could  have  no  further  claim  on  them 
for  support  or  sympathy. 

The  generous  girl  did  not  lose  heart  on  that  account :  she 
had  a  firm  trust  in  Him  for  whose  sake  she  was  prepared  to 
make  any  sacrifice,  and  was  determined  to  support  herself 
by  her  own  exertions,  without  ever  appealing  to  her  rela¬ 
tives  at  home,  or  accepting  aid  from  strangers.  She  was  a 
proficient  in  music  and  painting,  spoke  five  languages,  and 
had  been  trained  during  her  constant  companionship  with 
her  father  to  be  eminently  practical. 

A  noble  French  lady  who  had  made  their  acquaintance  at 
Florence  some  years  before,  happened  to  live  in  the  neigh¬ 
borhood  of  the  town  in  which  they  had  been  staying.  She 
felt  a  warm  sympathy  for  the  lovely  orphan,  whose  many 
accomplishments  and  beautiful  character  she  admired.  She 
was  exceedingly  kind  during  the  last  illness  of  the  parent, 
made  her  husband  superintend  all  the  arrangements  for  the 
funeral,  and  then  insisted  on  taking  her  young  friend  home 
with  her  for  a  few  weeks’  repose  and  distraction  from  her 
bereavement. 

A  low  fever,  brought  on  by  long  bodily  fatigue  and  se¬ 
vere  mental  trials,  compelled  a  stay  of  several  months  with 
the  family,  at  the  end  of  which  the  lady  proposed  that  she 


TRUE  KINDNESS  REWARDED  BT  HEROIC  DEVOTION.  375 

should  make  the  castle  her  home  for  the  next  year,  hoping 
that,  in  the  interval,  the  relatives  of  the  interesting  English 
girl  would  relax  from  a  rigor  which  she  could  not  under¬ 
stand.  Her  young  guest,  in  her  perplexity,  seeing  no  avenue 
open  to  her  through  the  difficulties  of  her  lonely  lot,  yielded 
a  reluctant  consent.  There  were  five  children  in  the  house, 
two  sons  and  three  daughters,  the  oldest  of  whom  was  a 
gild  of  fifteen  ;  they  were  under  the  care  of  an  elderly  lady, 
who  acted  as  governess  ;  and  these  with  the  grandmother, 
a  titled  and  stately  old  dame  of  the  last  century,  with  a 
large  retinue  of  servants,  composed  the  household. 

Not  till  after  a  week’s  stay  in  the  castle  did  our  heroine, 
whom  we  shall  call  Miss  Edwards,  discover  that  the  old 
dowager  was  a  rank  Voltairian ;  that  her  son,  the  count, 
was  an  avowed  materialist,  while  the  countess  only  clung 
to  the  religion  of  her  fathers  by  her  attachment  to  the  legit¬ 
imist  cause.  The  children  were  brought  up  in  open  and 
avowed  unbelief,  although  the  governess  still  seemed  to 
keep  up  in  private  a  few  simple  practices  of  devotion. 

The  dowager-countess,  who  had  followed  her  family  into 
exile  during  the  Reign  of  Terror,  spoke  English  fairly,  and 
was  in  all  things  a  great  admirer  of  England,  save,  as  she 
was  wont  to  say,  ‘ 6  the  absurd  and  superstitious  reverence 
of  the  English  for  a  church  establishment  which  was  only 
Popery  without  the  Mass,  and  with  the  reigning  prime-minis¬ 
ter  for  Pope.”  She  took  a  great  liking  for  the  beautiful  or¬ 
phan,  insisted  on  her  having  her  apartment  next  to  her  own 
rooms,  and  put  forth  all  the  graces  of  a  cultivated  mind  and 
the  charm  of  most  fascinating  manners,  in  consoling  her  dur¬ 
ing  her  first  grief,  in  soothing  her  suffering  during  her  ill¬ 
ness,  and  in  amusing  her  loneliness  during  convalescence. 
The  old  lady  was  kind-hearted  ;  her  skepticism  was  the 
result  of  her  early  training  and  associations  and  it  was 
very  seriouly  shaken  by  the  unaffected  piety  and  deep,  un-‘ 
questioning  faith  of  the  little  convert. 

The  latter  had  to  relate  to  her  venerable  friend  the  whole 
story  of  her  own  and  her  father’s  conversion.  This  was 
told  in  presence  of  the  count  and  countess,  who,  for  the 


376 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


first  time  in  their  lives,  felt  an  irresistible  attraction  toward 
the  recital  of  interior  struggles  of  two  superior  souls  seek¬ 
ing  for  a  perfect  religious  faith,  and,  when  found,  giving  up 
the  whole  world  to  secure  and  enjoy  its  possession.  Uncon¬ 
sciously  the  little  convalescent  was  drawn  into  giving  her 
own  explanations  of  Catholic  doctrine  and  practice ;  the 
perfect  harmony  history  establishes  between  the  Church  of 
the  nineteenth  and  that  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  ; 
the  beautiful  significance  of  the  sacramental  system,  and  the 
power  of  the  solemn  Church  ceremonial  in  lifting  the  soul 
up  to  God.  Then  came  a  most  interesting  discussion  of 
Catholic  theories  of  art.  Indeed  the  first  acquaintance  of 
the  count  and  countess  with  their  eloquent  little  teacher — 
for  such  she  now  was — had  been  made  while  the  latter  was 
sketching  some  of  the  most  beautiful  frescoes  of  the  Bap¬ 
tistery  in  Florence.  Now  as  she  progressed  toward  perfect 
health,  these  sketches  were  exhibited,  and  the  children  were 
invited  with  their  governess  to  be  present  at  the  charming 
stories  about  medieval  Christian  art  and  artists  which  the 
young  girl  poured  forth  as  one  inspired. 

And  she  was.  During  her  fever  she  had  almost  vowed — 
at  any  rate  she  had  made  herself  a  promise  —that  she  would 
devote  herself  to  the  hospitable  family  into  which,  in  her 
extremity  of  distress,  she  had  been  received  and  treated 
with  such  respect  and  tenderness  ;  she  would  not  quit  that 
interesting  household  till  she  had  enriched  it  with  the  only 
treasure  she  possessed  in  the  world, — a  living  faith. 

The  countess,  who  had  conceived  a  true  motherly  affec¬ 
tion  for  the  gifted  girl,  protested  that  she  would  never  part 
with  her,  and  the  dowager  declared  that  Miss  Edwards  had 
become  necessary  to  her.  So,  to  quiet  the  latter’s  scruples 
and  laudable  self-love,  it  was  arranged  that  she  would  stay 
in  the  family  as  companion  to  the  old  countess,  who,  on  her 
side,  wanted  to  adopt  the  girl  as  her  daughter. 

About  ten  weeks  after  her  father’s  death,  Miss  Edwards 
received  the  visit  of  a  young  cousin  traveling  with  his 
mother,  and  who  was  all  but  betrothed  to  his  fair  relative. 
They  had  spent  the  winter  in  Palermo,  and  had  learned  in 


TRUE  KINDNESS  REWARDED  BY  HEROIC  DEVOTION.  377 

Rome  of  the  death  of  Mr.  Edwards,  without,  however, 
hearing  then  of  his  having  died  a  Catholic.  The  son  was 
deeply  attached  to  his  cousin ;  he  was  the  heir  to  a  title 
and  a  splendid  fortune,  and  would  have  laid  both  at  her 
feet  if  she  consented  to  renounce  what  his  mother  called 
“the  papal  delusion. ”  But,  though  the  mother  pleaded 
earnestly  with  her  niece,  she  found  her  proof  against  all  the 
arguments  she  could  draw  from  theology,  love,  and  ambi¬ 
tion  ;  and  mother  and  son  left  the  castle  without  any  offer 
of  marriage  being  made. 

It  was  a  keen  pang  for  the  young  and  fortuneless  orphan : 
she  loved  her  kinsman,  though  she  said  not  so  ;  and  when 
he  had  gone,  she  was  found  in  an  agony  of  tears  by  the 
countess,  who,  touched  to  the  heart,  employed  all  the  ten¬ 
derness  and  delicacy  of  a  true  womanly  affection  in  sooth¬ 
ing  her  friend’ s  bitter  distress. 

Let  us  abridge  this  narrative.  The  dowager,  before  a 
twelvemonth  had  elapsed,  died  reconciled  to  the  faith  of 
her  childhood,  blessing  her  whom  she  called  her  daughter 
and  angel-guardian  as  the  minister  of  God’s  mercy  in  her 
own  behalf.  From  her  son,  with  her  dying  breath,  she  ex¬ 
acted  the  promise  that  he  should  follow  his  mother’s  latest 
example,  rear  his  children  as  true  practical  Catholics,  and 
have  especial  care  of  the  Christian  education  of  his  servants 
and  numerous  dependants. 

The  promise  was  faithfully  kept.  The  conversation,  the 
angelic  life  of  Miss  Edwards,  the  influence  which  her  piety 
and  goodness  exercised  on  his  children  and  the  entire  house¬ 
hold,  had  made  a  deep  impression  on  him.  Since  his  first 
communion,  he  had  never  approached  the  sacraments.  But 
the  deep  peace  which  had  settled  on  his  mother  after  her 
reconciliation  with  God  had  recalled  the  sweet  happiness  of 
his  own  innocent  years.  Then  he  gave  his  cordial  support 
to  Miss  Edwards  while  she  set  about,  at  his  request,  instruct¬ 
ing  and  preparing  the  three  oldest  children  for  confession 
and  communion. 

N or  was  this  all ;  the  servants  were  also  drawn  to  the 
beautiful  young  stranger.  She  took  it  on  herself  to  in- 


378 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


struct  them  likewise,  and  said  with  them  the  rosary  and 
night  prayers  every  day,  explaining  so  interestingly  this 
beautiful  devotion  that,  at  length,  the  whole  household 
joined  in  night  prayers,  the  count  himself  reciting  them. 

All  this  while  the  countess  remained  proof  to  every  ar¬ 
gument  and  example.  Tenderly  as  she  loved  and  greatly 
as  she  admired  Miss  Edwards, — the  worldly  education  she 
had  received,  and  her  intimacy  with  one  of  the  foremost 
female  infidel  writers  of  France,  seemed  to  render  her  im¬ 
pervious  to  the  light  of  truth  and  the  influence  of  others’ 
holy  life.  Nevertheless  she  consented  to  aid  her  young 
friend  in  restoring  the  beautiful  little  family  chapel  in  the 
castle.  It  had  been  neglected  for  more  than  sixty  years, 
and  served  as  a  lumber-room.  But  as  she  was  herself  a 
great  lover  of  art,  she  gratefully  accepted  her  friend’s  offer 
to  decorate  and  paint  it  with  her  own  hand.  Miss  Edwards 
had  secretly  vowed  to  do  so  in  order  to  obtain  the  grace  of 
the  countess’s  conversion. 

So  the  good  count  had  the  chapel  cleared  of  every  pro¬ 
fane  article,  had  the  windows  repaired,  new  furniture  pur¬ 
chased,  and  a  temporary  altar  made,  the  rector  of  the  parish 
being  invited  to  celebrate  mass.  It  was  quite  a  family  fes¬ 
tival  for  the  household  and  the  numerous  tenantry. 

Thenceforward  Miss  Edwards  and  the  countess  labored  to¬ 
gether  to  prepare  designs  for  the  frescoes,  the  illumination  of 
the  wood  and  iron  work,  and  the  restoration  of  the  mutilated 
stained  glass  in  the  windows.  The  two  oldest  children  by 
this  time  were  able  to  work  at  some  of  the  details.  For  our 
little  apostle  had  been  forced  by  her  noble  patrons  to  open 
a  little  school  of  art  in  the  castle,  and  she  found  or  created 
enthusiastic  pupils. 

And  so  the  years  sped  by.  Inside  and  outside  of  the  cas¬ 
tle  the  zeal  and  charity  of  the  two  ladies  were  felt  in  many 
a  home,  and  their  names  mentioned  together  in  many  a 
heartfelt  blessing  and  fervent  prayer.  It  was  precisely 
what  our  little  heroine  wanted,  that  her  friend  should  seem 
to  have  herself  the  initiative  in  every  good  work,  so  as  to  re¬ 
move  all  cause  of  jealousy, — and  that  she  should  have  before 


TRUE  KINDNESS  REWARDED  BT  HEROIC  DEVOTION.  379 

the  people  the  merit  of  every  charitable  deed.  Thus  all  were 
in  reality  praying  for  the  noble  lady’ s  conversion. 

Miss  Edwards  would  persist  in  calling  herself  the  coun¬ 
tess’  s  companion,  though  the  latter  loved  her  and  treated  her 
„  as  the  dearest  of  sisters.  They  spent  two  seasons  together 
in  Paris,  where  the  countess’s  friends  were  surprised  at  see¬ 
ing  her  assiduous,  together  with  her  husband,  at  divine  ser¬ 
vice  on  Sundays  and  holy-days,  devoted  to  every  prominent 
work  of  charity,  while  she  continued  to  be  attentive  to  all 
the  duties  required  of  her  by  her  position  in  society.  Some 
of  her  friends  affirmed  that  Miss  Edwards  must  be  a  female 
Jesuit,  sent  by  the  crafty  order  to  the  family  of  the  count 
to  convert  his  mother  and  himself,  and  to  make  sure  after 
his  death  of  a  good  share  of  his  property.  All  this  ab¬ 
surd  gossip  did  not  serve  the  cause  of  unbelief  in  the  esti¬ 
mation  of  the  countess.  Still  the  false  shame  called  human 
respect  held  her  back  from  avowing  to  her  husband  or  to 
her  dear  young  friend  that  she  yearned  to  have  their  faith. 
For  she  did  not,  and,  as  she  thought,  could  not  believe. 
Nor  could  she  be  induced  to  pray. 

Such  was  her  state  of  mind  when  the  revolution  of  Feb¬ 
ruary,  1848,  drove  Louis  Philippe  into  exile,  and  inaugurated 
once  more  a  republican  form  of  government  in  France. 
The  count  was  elected  a  member  of  the  National  Assembly, 
and  this  circumstance  led  the  countess  and  Miss  Edwards 
to  accompany  him  to  Paris  at  the  very  moment  the  cholera 
was  raging  most  virulently.  The  countess,  alarmed,  was  just 
preparing  to  return  to  her  family,  when  she  was  seized  by 
the  plague.  Her  friend  at  once,  as  by  a  sudden  inspiration, 
offered  her  own  life  to.  God  in  exchange  of  that  of  the  coun¬ 
tess,  on  the  condition  that  He  would  bestow  on  that  dear 
soul  the  gift  of  faith.  The  sacrifice  was  accepted,  the  coun¬ 
tess  was  spared  to  live  and  die  a  most  fervent  Christian ; 
Miss  Edwards  was  carried  off  by  the  pestilence,  rejoicing 
that  God  had  heard  her  prayer,  and  beseeching  him  to 
remember  in  his  mercy  her  friends  in  England,  and  one 
above  all  others,  whose  love  still  lived  in  her  faithful 
heart. 


380 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


UNLADYLIKE  AND  UNWOMANLY  CONDUCT. 

It  should  never  be  forgotten  by  families  whom  God  has 
blessed  with  wealth,  all  the  more  especially  when  that 
wealth  has  been  accumulated  from  the  labors  of  the  poor,  - 
—that  persons  forced  to  accept  the  position  of  lady  com¬ 
panions,  are,  without  exception,  deserving  of  the  kindest 
sympathy,  and  accustomed  to  be  treated  with  respect.  They 
are  not  born  to  such  a  position,  nor  prepared  or  trained  for 
it  from  girlhood,  but  compelled  to  seek  for  it  by  misfortunes 
for  which  they  are  in  nowise  accountable.  They  are  ladies 
not  unfrequently  born  amid  wealth  equal  or  superior  to  that 
of  the  family  of  which  accident  makes  them  inmates, — ladies 
of  refined  feelings,  sensitive  nature,  and  very  superior  edu¬ 
cation. 

To  such  is  always  paid  by  the  true  woman  and  the  true 
lady  the  respect  due  to  one’ s  own  sex  and  to  the  require¬ 
ments  of  the  former  position,  as  well  as  the  reverence  due  to 
unmerited  ill-fortune,  and  the  delicate  attentions  and  cordial 
hospitality  which  make  a  shrinking,  sensitive  stranger  for¬ 
get  the  old  home  in  the  affectionate  warmth  of  the  new. 

Our  kind  and  generous-hearted  readers  will  easily  under¬ 
stand  the  lesson  conveyed  in  the  contrasted  conduct  of  the 
two  women  mentioned  in  the  following  narrative,  every  de¬ 
tail  of  which  is  taken  from  real  life  in  our  own  community. 
They  will  appreciate,  we  are  confident,  our  endeavor  to 
make  of  every  mother  who  may  take  kindly  to  our  teach¬ 
ing  one  able  to  fill  her  sons  with  that  spirit  of  Christian 
chivalry  we  have  already  eulogized.  One  of  its  fundamen¬ 
tal  laws  was  reverence  for  woman  and  life-long  devotion  to 
her  service. 

A  family  of  gentle  blood  and  very  superior  culture  had 
been  involved  by  the  imprudence  of  one  of  its  members  in 
disasters  that  swept  every  thing  away  but  a  bare  competency. 
They  settled,  thereupon,  in  a  remote  part  of  one  of  the  mid¬ 
dle  Atlantic  States,  and  betook  themselves  to  farming  on  a 
large  scale,  while  some  of  the  elder  sons  pursued  the  studies 


UNLADYLIKE  AND  UNWOMANLY  CONDUCT.  381 

already  begun  in  the  liberal  professions.  The  daughters 
inherited  from  their  mother  remarkable  mental  powers, 
which  the  most  careful  home  education  had  developed  to 
the  utmost.  But  with  this  devoted  mother’s  death  other 
calamities  befell  her  husband  and  children,  and  one  of  the 
oldest  daughters,  ambitious  to  be  of  help  to  her  younger 
sisters,  and  much  against  the  wishes  of  the  whole  family, 
sought  the  place  of  governess. 

It  so  happened  that  the  person  who  first  answered  the 
advertisement  belonged  to  the  class  not  then  very  numer¬ 
ous  and  called  by  the  French  grands  industriels.  His 
wife  was  the  daughter  of  one  of  his  business  connections. 
There  was  wealth  ;  there  could,  there  ought  to  have  been, 
if  not  the  high  breeding  and  refinement  which  come  natu¬ 
rally  with  gentle  blood  and  training,  at  least  the  gentleness, 
the  delicacy  of  tact,  and  the  courtesy  which  are  the  insep¬ 
arable  accompaniments  of  a  true  womanly  nature.  What 
there  was,  and  was  not,  in  the  wealthy  man’s  home,  we  shall 
see  presently. 

The  oldest  brother  of  the  young  lady,  after  vainly  en¬ 
deavoring  to  dissuade  his  self-willed  sister  from  a  course 
which  deeply  mortified  him,  felt  himself  bound  to  see  that 
in  the  family  she  was  going  to  there  should  be  every 
thing  to  secure  her  comfort  and  self-respect.  The  mansion 
was  far  away  from  the  city,  and,  though  only  a  summer 
residence,  it  was  magnificently  furnished  and  surrounded 
by  beautiful  grounds.  Both  the  master  and  mistress  re¬ 
ceived  the  young  gentleman,  already  most  favorably  known 
in  his  profession,  with  the  most  profuse  assurances  of  in¬ 
terest  in  his  sister,  and  reiterated  promises  that  she  would 
be  treated  in  every  respect  as  their  own  sister  and  a  mem¬ 
ber  of  their  family. 

He,  however,  felt  exceedingly  uncomfortable  amid  the 
loud  luxury  of  this  splendid  abode,  and  not  at  all  reassured 
by  the  spontaneous  promises  of  its  masters.  A  last  effort,  on 
his  return  to  town,  was  tried  to  dissuade  the  inexperienced 
and  simple  girl  from  her  purpose ;  but  she  persisted. 

To  her  surprise, — almost  to  her  dismay,— -she  was  received 


382 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


with  the  coldest  courtesy  ;  a  French  maid,  destined  to  be 
to  her  a  perpetual  annoyance,  conducted  her  to  her  room, 
notifying  her  that  in  half  an  hour  she  would  be  called  U 
dinner.  The  half-hour  of  expectation  gave  the  new-comer 
ample  time  for  contrasting  her  own  hospitable  and  refined 
home  to  the  cold  and  gilded  vulgarity  which  stared  at  her 
from  every  side.  When,  presently,  she  went  down  to  din¬ 
ner,  she  only  found  the  children  in  the  dining-room  ;  and, 
though  surprised  at  not  finding  any  other  member  of  the 
family  there,  she  so  far  mastered  every  painful  emotion  as 
to  greet  all  her  young  pupils  most  affectionately,  keeping 
up  a  most  pleasant  conversation  with  them  till  the  meal  was 
ended. 

The  mistress  of  the  house,  who,  in  her  total  ignorance  of 
what  good-breeding  and  courtesy  demanded,  had  deemed  it 
beneath  her  to  welcome  a  governess  on  her  arrival  in  the 
house,  now  majestically  sailed  into  the  drawing-room,  over¬ 
dressed,  for  her  afternoon  ride,  and,  without  further  prelimi¬ 
nary,  informed  the  young  lady  (whom  we  must  designate  as 
Miss  Porter)  of  what  she  was  expected  to  do.  Beside  her 
hard  and  impracticable  task  of  teaching  a  half-dozen  natural¬ 
ly  good-hearted,  but  self-indulged  and  neglected  children, 
Miss  Porter  was  expected  to  teach  their  mother  French.  She 
was  always  to  dine  with  the  children,  and,  as  they  were  in 
the  country,  she  was  to  take  tea  with  the  master  and  mis¬ 
tress.  But  this  great  privilege  was  to  be  withdrawn  on 
the  return  of  the  family  to  the  city. 

There  was,  happily,  no  time  for  reflection.  The  girl  of 
seventeen  was  making  her  first  experiment  of  self-reliance  ; 
and  she  nerved  herself  to  the  work  before  her.  The  train¬ 
ing  which  her  pious  mother  had  given  her  enabled  her  to 
conceal  a  proud  high  temper  beneath  unruffled  gentleness, 
the  habitual  result  of  conscientious  self-restraint.  She 
threw  herself  at  once  into  her  work  of  winning  the  children, 
and  at  once  made  a  conquest  of  every  one  of  them.  This 
affection  at  least,  she  thought,  would  be  one  sweet  com¬ 
pensation  for  the  trials  which  she  instinctively  foresaw ; 
and  she  would  have  pleasant  and  engrossing  occupation  in 


UNLADYLIKE  AND  UNWOMANLY  CONDUCT. 


383 


cultivating  the  young  minds  and  hearts  intrusted  to  her, 
after  the  same  manner  her  worshiped  mother  had  developed 
her  own  qualities. 

She  was  not  a  handsome  girl ;  but  intelligence,  innocence, 
and  goodness  lit  up  her  refined  features  with  a  radiance 
far  superior  to  mere  beauty  of  outline  or  complexion.  Her 
simple  black  dress,  too  (for  she  was  in  deep  mourning),  lent 
her  the  additional  charm  of  interest  in  the  eyes  of  her  sym¬ 
pathetic  young  pupils  ;  and  thus  the  afternoon  was  soon 
passed,  to  their  extreme  delight,  in  a  variety  of  anecdote 
and  illustration,  which  instructed  and  charmed  them. 

At  tea,  the  unwary  and  unsuspceting  girl  was  drawn  out 

by  her  host,  Mr.  Z - ,  on  a  number  of  most  interesting 

historical  and  literary  topics ;  and  she,  who  had  always 
been  accustomed  to  hear  such  matters  discussed  in  her  own 
family,  very  naturally  answered  him  to  the  best  of  her 
power,  displaying  not  only  remarkable  and  extensive  cul¬ 
ture,  but  great  originality  of  thought  and  uncommon  con¬ 
versational  power.  He  was  delighted,  — but  not  so  his  wife. 
Had  the  simple-hearted  girl  but  caught  the  eyes  of  Mrs. 

Z - ,  and  noticed  the  strange  light  that  filled  them,  she 

might  have  been  warned  in  time. 

The  conversation  was  kept  up  after  supper  ;  and  the  sin¬ 
cere  enjoyment  felt  by  Miss  Porter  during  this  first  even¬ 
ing  in  her  new  home  would  have  gone  far  toward  removing 
the  feeling  caused  by  her  chilling  reception,  if  the  mistress 
of  the  house  had  not  suddenly  and  without  any  apology 
broken  up  the  little  circle  by  retiring  very  early. 

Once  in  her  own  room,  the  sense  of  loneliness  overwhelmed 
the  poor  orphan  girl  like  the  sudden  rush  of  a  mighty  wave, 
and  she  gave  way  to  the  tears  she  had  so  long  struggled  to 
keep  back.  But  her  sweet  exercises  of  devotion  afforded  a 
timely  and  most  blessed  relief.  A  chapter  of  “The  Imita¬ 
tion  of  Christ,”  taken  at  the  first  opening  of  that  golden 
book,  gave  her  delicious  words  of  light  and  comfort,  as  if 
they  had  been  just  written  there  for  her  by  the  hand  of  the 
Master  himself  ;  and  then  came  the  night  prayers  poured 
out  as  if  she  knelt  visibly  before  the  entire  court  of  Heaven, 


384 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


and  she  almost  felt  that  the  Blessed  Mother  was  interceding 
for  her,  and  as  if  a  sensation  of  nearness  to  her  own  saint¬ 
like  parent  stole  on  her  soul  like  a  soothing  and  blissful 
presence. 

Happily,  too,  she  knew  not  as  she  lay  down  to  her  much- 
needed  repose, — that  her  mistress  had  already  become  her 
enemy,  and  that  the  French  maid  had  sworn  to  be  her  foe 
from  the  moment  she  had  crossed  the  threshold.  Mistress 
and  maid  from  that  very  first  evening  had  exchanged  opin¬ 
ions  about  the  governess,  and  each  found  that  she  could 
make  use  of  the  other  to  render  that  young  life  miserable 
while  within  their  reach. 

Ah !  if  that  selfish,  under-bred,  jealous  mother  had  only 
known  what  a  treasure  she  and  her  children  possessed  in 
the  young  stranger, — a  child  almost,  who  had  at  length 
lain  down  to  slumber  so  peacefully  beneath  the  watchful 
eyes  of  her  heavenly  protectors,  how  much  she  might  have 
profited  by  the  talents  which  afterward  proved  to  so  many 
a  blessing  beyond  all  price  ! 

But  with  the  very  next  morning  began  a  series  of  petty 
annoyances  on  the  part  of  the  maid,  and  of  vexations  and 
humiliations  on  the  part  of  her  vulgar  mistress,  which  went 
very  near  breaking  that  sensitive  young  heart  and  ruining 
the  child’ s  health  forever. 

The  breakfast  and  dinner  with  the  children, — though  she 
felt  the  humiliation  deeply, — would  have  been  acceptable 
to  the  governess,  because  it  afforded  her  opportunities  of 
teaching  her  pupils  good  manners,  and  of  reciprocating  the 
delight  her  company  never  ceased  to  cause  them.  But  the 
French  maid,  with  a  mock  humility,  found  means  of  inform¬ 
ing  her  in  presence  of  the  children,  and  of  one  or  two  ser¬ 
vants,  that  her  mistress  never  allowed  governesses  to  dine 

with  her.  When  the  hour  arrived  for  giving  Mrs.  Z - 

her  lesson  in  French,  the  coarse  nature  of  the  purse-proud 
thing  showed  itself  in  some  pettish  remarks  about  Miss 
P orter’ s  not  pronouncing  French  as  well  as  the  maid  ;  and 
to  decide  the  question  the  latter  was  called  in  to  give  her 
judgment  on  Miss  Porter’s  proficiency.  Yet  the  brave  little 


UNLADYLIKE  AND  UNWOMANLY  CONDUCT.  385 

orphan  resolved  that  she  would  keep  both  her  temper  and 

her  place,  were  it  only  to  improve  the  children  who  grew 

hourly  more  fond  of  her.  And  so  she  began  her  term  of 

service,  of  servitude  rather,  resolved  to  work  and 

/ 

.  .  .  “  Wait  from  weary  day  to  weary  day.” 

Shall  we  detail  the  trials  to  which  the  unprotected  child’ s 
patience,  temper,  and  self-denying  generosity  were  put  by 
two  women  tacitly  leagued  to  humiliate  and  wound  her  at 
every  turn  ?  And  how,  under  all  this  unkindness  and  ma¬ 
lignity,  the  young  heart  began  to  faint  and  sicken,  and  the 
brave,  self-reliant  spirit  to  grow  weary  of  the  intolerable 
burden  it  had  to  bear  ?  For  there  was  no  one  to  whom  she 
could,  even  if  she  would,  open  her  full  heart. 

Then,  although  the  children  had  their  drives  regularly 
each  forenoon  and  afternoon,  their  governess  was  never  per¬ 
mitted  or  even  asked  to  accompany  them,  while  the  French 
maid  became  their  almost  constant  companion  in  these  recre¬ 
ations.  Whatever  outdoor  exercise  the  poor  drooping  girl 

wished  to  take,  she  took  alone  in  the  grounds.  Mr.  Z - , 

it  was  but  too  apparent,  had  been  lectured  by  his  wife  for 
presuming  to  draw  out  Miss  Porter  in  conversation ;  and, 
for  peace  sake,  he  was  as  dull  as  he  could  be  both  at  the  tea- 
table  and  in  the  drawing-room.  But  what  was  most  galling 
to  one  who  was  a  gentlewoman  by  birth,  and  accustomed  to 
the  very  best  society,  whenever  strangers  visited  the  house 
she  was  not  only  excluded  from  the  dinner- table  but  from 
the  tea-table  and  the  drawing-room. 

At  length  the  sad  tone  of  some  of  Miss  Porter’ s  letters  to 
her  family  awakened  the  suspicions  of  her  brother  ;  and 
one  afternoon  he  and  one  of  her  sisters  suddenly  made  their 
appearance  in  the  house.  It  so  happened  that  at  this  very 
moment  some  of  Mr.  Porter’s  most  valued  friends  were 

visiting  Mr.  Z - ,  and  the  governess,  for  whom  the  visitors 

had  a  warm  affection,  had  been,  with  an  ingenious  cruelty, 
debarred  from  every  opportunity  of  speaking  to  them. 

Nevertheless  Mr.  Porter  was  received  with  the  utmost 
courtesy  and  apparent  warmth,  and  proffered  all  the  hospi- 

25 


386 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


talities  of  the  mansion.  But  there  was  evident  embarrass¬ 
ment  in  the  politeness  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Z - .  The  cause 

was  soon  made  known  by  the  young  governess  herself,  who 
threw  herself  into  her  sister’s  arms  with  the  joy  and  relief 
of  one  who  escapes  from  the  rack.  And  yet  it  was  with 
extreme  reluctance  the  poor  girl  told  her  tale.  The  brother 
could  scarcely  contain  his  indignation,  and  would  have  his 
little  sufferer  return  with  him  that  very  evening.  But  her 
three  months  had  not  yet  expired,  and  she  was  determined 
to  fulfill  her  engagement.  So,  at  her  most  pressing  entreaty 
he  consented  to  allow  her  to  remain  ;  and  it  was  agreed  that 
no  hint  should  be  given  to  Mr.  Z - or  his  wife,  of  the  rev¬ 

elation  Miss  Porter  had  been  forced  to  make.  The  people 
were,  he  justly  thought,  so  much  beneath  himself  and  his 
sister,  that  they  must  scorn  to  show  either  anger  or  resent¬ 
ment. 

So  Mrs.  Z - was  not  gratified  by  witnessing  either  the 

exhibition  of  Miss  Porter’s  feeling  as  she  wept  on  her  sis¬ 
ter’s  neck,  or  when  she  leaned  her  head  on  her  strong  broth¬ 
er’  s  shoulder,  and  promised  him,  through  her  tears,  that  she 
would  do  all  the  good  she  could  to  the  children  during  the 
remaining  weeks  of  her  stay,  and  seek  in  prayer  and  com¬ 
munion  with  God  the  comfort  which  never  would  be  refused 
to  her. 

She  was  thenceforward,  if  possible,  more  patient  and 
more  devoted  ;  she  certainly  was  brighter  and  stronger. 
She  felt  that  the  strong  current  of  welcome  sympathy 
flowed  daily  to  her  from  the  hearts  of  her  dear  ones  at 
home  ;  and  from  on  high  a  still  more  powerful  current  of 
interior  life  lifted  the  young  heart  upward  and  bore  it  joy¬ 
ously  forward  amid  the  increasing  persecutions  she  had  to 
endure. 

At  length  the  three  months  came  to  an  end.  Before  the 
end,  however,  another  family  at  Washington,  fitted  in  every 
way  to  prize  Miss  Porter  as  a  companion  and  an  instruc¬ 
tress,  had  eagerly  solicited  the  privilege  of  possessing  her. 
They  had  become  acquainted  with  her  brothers  and  sis¬ 
ters,  and  were  drawn  to  them  by  the  twofold  sympathy  of 


UNLADYLIKE  AND  UNWOMANLY  CONDUCT. 


887 


the  same  religion  and  the  same  gentle  blood  and  refined 
tastes. 

Mr.  Z - ,  when  it  was  too  late,  remonstrated  with  his 

wife  on  the  loss  of  the  invaluable  governess,  to  whose  worth 
he  had  never  been  blind,  and  reproached  her,  very  uselessly, 
with  her  most  unkind  treatment  of  a  woman  who,  he  de¬ 
clared,  was  infinitely  her  superior  in  every  way.  This  did 
not  mollify  the  heart  of  his  partner  or  dispose  her  to  regard 
the  departure  of  her  victim  with  any  feeling  akin  to  regret. 
The  leave-taking  cost  the  children  sincere  pain  ;  they  had 
been  vastly  improved  by  their  beloved  teacher,  and  never 
forgot  her  beautiful  instructions  and  still  more  beautiful 
character.  Her  influence,  however,  was  like  the  passing 
foot-prints  on  the  sands  of  a  stormy  beach,  soon  blotted  out 
by  the  next  waves  and  the  rubbage  they  left  behind  in  re¬ 
ceding.  Their  parents  have  long  since  been  dead,  nor  shall 
the  mention  of  their  names  on  these  pages  lift  them  up  from 
the  utter  nullity  in  which  they  and  their  fortune  lie  buried. 
Their  children  have  built  after  them  neither  a  name  nor  a 
fortune. 

In  Washington  Miss  Porter  became  in  very  deed  the  joy 
and  delight  of  her  new  friends.  She  was  loved  as  a  sister 
by  the  noble  woman  who  prized  to  their  full  value  all  her 
extraordinary  gifts.  The  children  fairly  worshiped  their 
teacher,  and  made  under  her  uncommon  progress  both  in 
] earning  and  in  the  science  of  self-control  and  self-denial. 
But  their  generous  mother,  impervious  as  her  unselfish  na¬ 
ture  was  to  any  thing  that  savored  of  jealousy  or  littleness, 
seemed  to  make  it  her  delight  to  bring  forward  her  young 
friend  on  every  possible  occasion,  using  every  industry  to 
call  forth  her  powers.  Thus  Miss  Porter  unconsciously 
found  herself  one  of  the  most  brilliant  stars  of  Washington 
society,  shedding  around  her  a  light  and  a  warmth  that 
created  no  envy,  made  her  hosts  of  friends,  and  left  her  the 
same  simple-hearted,  pure-minded  girl  she  had  been  at  her 
mother’s  knee.  Of  her  after  career  we  say  nothing.  God 
knows  it,  and  she  would  not  have  the  world  praise  it. 


388 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TREE  WOMANHOOD. 


PRACTICAL  RULES  FOR  GOVERNESSES. 

The  two  preceding  narratives  must  dispense  ns  with  mnch 
counseling.  We  have  in  them  touched  upon  some  of  the 
principal  difficulties  and  hardships  that  this  numerous, 
hard-worked,  little  understood,  and  ill-paid  class  of  persons 
have  to  meet  with.  We  trust  in  God’s  blessing  on  this 
book  that  wealthy  mothers  who  read  it, — especially  if  they 
be  such  as  would  listen  respectfully  to  a  priest’ s  instruction 
or  adjuration, — will  be  touched  by  His  grace  to  deal  kindly, 
gently,  generously, — in  all  Christian  charity  and  courtesy, — 
with  those  to  whom  they  commit  the  whole  or  part  of  their 
own  sacred  function  of  teaching  and  educating. 

Parents,  of  whatever  rank,  should  remember  that  young 
women  who  tit  themselves  by  long  and  careful  training  for 
the  sacred  functions  of  educators  in  families,  are  persons 
whom  it  is  almost  sacrilege  to  treat  with  any  sort  of  disre¬ 
spect  ;  what  then  must  the  guilt  be  when  such  persons  are 
degraded  systematically,  not  only  in  the  eyes  of  servants  and 
other  dependants,  but  especially  in  the  eyes  of  the  children 
whom  they  are  expected  to  instruct  and  educate. 

Surely  mothers, — Christian  mothers,  alive  to  the  surpass¬ 
ing  importance  of  a  thorough  moral  education,  and  con¬ 
scious,  too,  of  the  sacredness  of  the  duties  they  devolve  on 
all  persons  to  whom  they  intrust  the  training  of  their  chil¬ 
dren, — ought  to  be  also  aware  of  the  absolute  necessity  of 
securing  to  such  persons  the  utmost  respect  and  considera¬ 
tion  within  their  own  households.  The  reasons  for  this  are 
peremptory.  In  the  first  place,  these  persons  represent  the 
mother  herself  (represent  indeed  both  parents),  in  her  most 
sacred  office  of  teacher.  How  reverence  for  the  mother’s 
person,  and  for  this  her  office,  demands  that  all  who  fill  her 
place  shall  be  reverenced  in  like  manner.  The  second 
reason,  akin  to  the  first,  is,  that  to  teach,  one  must  have 
authority;  for,  as  we  have  said  in  another  chapter,  “with¬ 
out  authority  there  can  be  no  discipline,  and  without  disci¬ 
pline  there  can  be  no  education.”  A  third  reason  is,  that 


WHAT  A  GOOD  GOVERNESS  MUST  OBSERVE. 


389 


the  dearest  interests  of  both  parents  and  children  are  in¬ 
volved  in  the  result  of  this  education  ;  the  interest  of  the 
parents,  whose  happiness  must  depend  largely  on  the  moral 
and  intellectual  advancement  of  their  off  spring, — and,  above 
all,  the  interest  of  the  children,  whose  future,  temporal  and 
eternal,  is  mostly  secured  or  sacrificed  by  the  training  they 
receive.  f 

It  would  seem  inconceivable,  therefore,  that  even  worldly- 
minded  parents  should  be  so  blind  to  what  they  owe  them¬ 
selves  and  their  children,  as  not  to  choose  their  governesses 
with  exceeding  care,  and  to  treat  those  of  their  choice  with 
equal  affection  and  respect.  But  that  a  Christian  mother, 
fearing  God  and  her  own  accountability  to  him,  should  not 
deem  it  a  most  conscientious  duty  to  have  her  governess 
reverenced  as  she  would  have  her  own  self,  and  aid  in  secur¬ 
ing  her  the  regard  and  affection  not  only  of  her  pupils,  but 
of  servants,  friends,  and  acquaintance — is  simply  monstrous. 

We  appeal,  then,  to  the  worshiped  and  zealous  mothers 
whose  whole  heart  is  in  their  home-work, — in  making  of 
their  sons  and  daughters  children  of  God, — to  welcome  to 
their  families  the  governess  they  have  scrupulously  selected 
as  they  would  an  own  sister,  and  to  make  her  feel  that  she 
is  regarded  as  such. 

This  is  one  of  the  home  charities, — and  it  is  also  good 
policy.  We  now  address  ourselves  to  the  governesses 
themselves. 

WHAT  A  GOOD  GOVEENESS  MUST  OBSEEVE. 

She  also  must  have  her  heart  in  her  work  ;  loving  it  for 
its  own  sake,  and  for  the  sake  of  Him  who  is  to  be  both  her 
chief  helper  and  her  magnificent  rewarder,  and  for  the  sake 
of  the  children,  whose  welfare  and  future  ability  must  de¬ 
pend  so  largely  on  her  labors. 

Bear  this  well  in  mind  ;  your  success, — even  supposing 
you  could  succeed  without  His  ever-present  help, — would  be 
a  barren  and  a  joyless  one  without  having  your  heart  set  on 
seeking  and  pleasing  God  before  and  above  all  things. 


390 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


This  is  the  sursum  corda  of  the  divine  sacrifice,  the  lifting 
of  our  hearts  and  aims  to  Him  from  whom  are  light  and 
knowledge  and  docility  of  soul,  and  progress  in  all  the  ways 
of  true  wisdom  and  true  happiness.  Cultivate  and  cherish 
this  loftiness  of  heart. 

Be  conscious  of  your  own  fitness  for  every  branch  you 
have  to  teach, — and  do  not  rest  satisfied  with  a  half  knowl¬ 
edge  of  any  science  which  may  be  necessary  or  useful  to  you. 
Remember  that,  so  long  as  you  live, — devoting  yourelf  as 
you  do  to  teaching, — you  must  study  to  improve  yourself. 
This  conscientious  desire  for  perfecting  yourself  in  every 
thing  worth  the  knowing,  and  the  knowing  well, — will  be  to 
you  a  most  precious  resource  should  you  happen  to  be  with  a 
family  where  you  are  left  to  yourself.  In  religious  orders, 
one  of  whose  chief  labors  is  that  of  teaching,  professors 
after  their  class-hours  are  left  to  the  solitude  of  their  own 
rooms.  He  who  writes  these  lines  has  himself  thus  taught 
for  a  good  part  of  his  life ;  and  he  knows  by  experience 
how  sweet  is  that  solitude  in  which  one  may  refresh  one’s 
heart  in  brief  and  sweet  communion  with  God,  or  in  com¬ 
pleting  one’s  knowledge  on  some  topic  of  actual  interest  or 
probable  future  necessity. 

Be  most  conscientious  in  preparing  the  matters  you  have 
to  teach,  as  well  as  in  taking  the  very  best  means  to  com¬ 
municate  your  knowledge  to  each  one  of  your  young  hear¬ 
ers.  If  your  heaxt  is  in  your  work,  you  can  scarcely  fail  in 
this.  Study  carefully  the  characters,  dispositions,  and  abil¬ 
ity  of  each  pupil.  Love  them,  make  them  love  you.  Omit 
no  art  or  exertion  which  can  make  them  consider  the  school¬ 
room  as  a  delightful  place,  and  school-hours  as  a  time  of 
real  enjoyment.  There  will  be  true  enjoyment  for  them, 
if  each  hour  and  each  lesson  makes  them  feel  that  they 
have  learned  something.  The  ripe  fruit  from  the  tree  of 
knowledge,  which  you  will  gather  for  them  and  present  to 
them  daily,  you  can  make  the  daintiest  and  most  appetizing 
of  fruits,  if  you  only  use  your  woman’s  skill  and  cunning  in 
preparing  it. 

With  those  who  are  slow  be  patient.  Do  not  confound 


WHAT  A  GOOD  GOVERNESS  MOST  OBSERVE. 


391 


slowness  with  dullness.  In  looking  back  over  our  own  col¬ 
lege  years,  and  , those  spent  in  teaching,  we  can  now  see 
many,  very  many  boys  who  were  considered  dull  because 
they  had  not  the  retentive  memory  or  quick  apprehension  of 
others  among  their  school-mates.  But  many  of  the  men  of 
quick  wit  and  powerful  memory  have  come  to  nothing,  like 
trees  blossoming  before  their  time,  and  dropping  their  un¬ 
formed  fruit  before  autumn  had  arrived  ;  while  we  now  see 
the  slow  men,  some  even  of  the  reputed  dunces,  foremost  in 
the  senate,  at  the  bar,  on  the  bench,  or  gracing  the  priest¬ 
hood. 

Form  the  judgment  and  intelligence  of  your  pupils  well,  . 
without,  however,  neglecting  their  memory.  Make  them 
understand  every  thing,  give  them  a  reason  for  every  thing ; 
illustrate  what  is  difficult  or  obscure  by  comparisons  or  ana¬ 
logies.  All  this  will  give  the  young  minds  you  are  forming 
a  thirst  for  study,  and  will  attach  them  to  you.  For  just 
as  women  of  your  age  can  make  the  very  birds,  beasts,  and 
fishes  troop  together  to  be  fed  by  them,  or  even  take  their 
food  fearlessly  from  the  well-known  hand,  even  so  will  the 
minds  which  you  feed  daily  with  sweet  and  dainty  food 
yearn  to  be  with  you  for  fresh  nourishment. 

Be  gentle,  calm,  self-possessed,  well-bred,  and  reserved. 
There  is  always  in  a  true  womanly  heart  a  good  deal  of  mo¬ 
therly  affection  and  tenderness, — which  children  will  feel  as 
they  would  the  sparks  from  a  charged  electric  receiver. 
Let  them  feel  that  in  your  heart  there  is  that  genuine  pulse 
of  motherly  kindness,  while  you  restrain  it,  and  keep  on 
it  the  check  of  reserve  and  dignity.  Outside  of  school- 
hours,  let  this  lady-like  and  dignified  reserve  never  quit 
you. 

Then,  again,  never  omit  an  opportunity  of  increasing 
your  pupils’  love  for  their  mother.  This  is  one  of  your  du¬ 
ties,  and  its  faithful  discharge  will  not  fail  to  make  her 
your  fast  friend.  Show  her  yourself  the  utmost  respect ; 
and  avoid  seeking  to  be  familiar  or  confidential,  no  matter 
how  much  you  may  be  disposed  to  be  so. 

You  will  need  great  patience  with  all  children ;  with  some 


392 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


you  will  need  extreme  patience.  You  must  endeavor  to 
school  yourself  to  supernatural  patience,  —  practiced  for 
His  ]ove  who  consummated  our  redemption  and  bought  our 
souls  from  Hell  by  going  to  the  pillar  and  the  cross  like  a 
lamb  to  the  slaughter.  Few  are  the  souls, — no  matter  how 
stubborn,  how  vicious,  how  perverse, — which  are  not  over¬ 
come  and  won  by  meekness  and  forbearance. 

Bear  and  forbear ,  then, — if  you  are  sensitive,  and  know 
yourself  prone  to  exaggerate  or  to  create,  in  your  trouble, 
phantoms  which  disappear  with  the  return  of  serenity  of 
soul.  Precisely  because  you  are  thus  sensitive  and  fanciful, 
never  act  or  speak  under  irritation  or  emotion.  How  often 
have  we  to  regret  what  is  spoken  or  done  impulsively  ! 
How  often  do  over-sensitive  and  imaginative  persons  make 
themselves  utterly  miserable  over  a  word  or  a  look,  to  which 
their  own  fancy  lent  a  meaning  and  a  coloring  without  any 
existence  in  reality ! 

Be  strong  enough,  brave  enough  to  bear  with  a  great  deal, 
both  because  all  have  to  bear  with  much,  and  because  the 
very  patience  practiced  at  the  present  moment  may  pur¬ 
chase  for  us  the  grace  which  shall  secure  all  our  future  happi¬ 
ness.  It  often  happens  that  in  a  family,  the  mistress  whose 
looks  or  words  offend  others,  all  unconsciously  to  herself, — 
is  sadly  burdened  with  many  cares  and  griefs,  and  most  de¬ 
serving  of  your  heartfelt  compassion.  If  the  sore  heart, 
which  she  heroically  conceals  while  tilling  all  the  duties  of 
her  station,  were  laid  bare  to  you,  you  would  kneel  down  to 
worship  its  goodness,  instead  of  taking  offense  at  the  look 
of  pain  never  meant  for  you,  or  the  unconscious  word  wrung 
from  her  as  from  one  on  the  rack. 

And  forbear, — from  judging,  from  speaking,  from  acting 
hastily  even  on  your  good  impulses.  Be  mistress  in  the 
house  of  your  own  soul ,  especially  while  you  are  under  the 
roof  of  another ;  and  this  discipline  will  enable  you,  when 
God’s  good  time  has  come  for  you,  to  be  truly  mistress  of 
your  own  house ,  governing  it  patiently,  gently,  lovingly, 
and  wisely ;  loved  of  your  husband,  your  children,  your 
servants.  All  this  will  come  of  that  sweet  womanly  for- 


WHAT  A  GOOD  GOVERNESS  MUST  OBSERVE. 


393 


bearance  learned  and  practiced  by  yon  while  dependent  on 
others. 

Imitate  to  the  utmost  of  your  power  the  examples  of  the 
lovely  gild  mentioned  in  the  section  on  lady  companions. 
Should  the  family  in  which  yon  find  yourself  be  one  lost  to 
all  sense  of  religion,  see  what  your  example  may  do  to  en¬ 
lighten  them.  Perhaps  God  has  sent  you  to  them  to  be  the 
means  of  their  salvation.  Perhaps  their  conversion  may  be 
the  sole  work  on  which  your  own  eternal  salvation  depends. 
It  may  even  be  that  there  can  be  for  you  no  place  in  the 
Company  of  the  Blessed,  save  on  the  condition  of  having 
these  souls  now  given  to  your  zeal  as  a  living  crown  around 
you  there.  Is  it  not  worth  while  to  try  what  you  can  do 
with  them  ?  And, — then,  again, — is  not  the  Divine  Work¬ 
man  with  you,  in  whose  hand  you  are  only  an  instrument  ? 
Ah!  we  do  not  consider  often  enough,  all  of  us — priests  and 
laymen,  men  and  women,  young  and  old — how  much  good 
He  would  do  with  us,  poor  weak  instruments  though  we  be, 
if  we  would  only  leave  ourselves  passively,  humbly  in  the 
Almighty  hand  !  Nor  do  we  take  time  to  reflect  that  even 
a  living  instrument,  a  living  heart, — which  will  not  obey 
that  wise  and  loving  hand,  exposes  itself  to  be  cast  into  the 
fire.  .  .  . 

Persons  who  have  been  well  brought  up,  and  have  had 
from  infancy  all  the  opportunities  and  graces  necessary  to 
form  both  mind  and  heart,  are  but  too  apt  to  misjudge  fami¬ 
lies  which  have  never  enjoyed  these  advantages, — families 
that  have  risen  to  opulence  through  a  brave  struggle  with 
obstacles  of  every  kind,  and  in  which  the  parents  are  either 
unconscious  of  their  own  deficiencies,  or  deplore  them  most 
bitterly.  When  brought  suddenly  into  contact  with  such 
persons,  we  are  shocked  and  repelled  by  their  rusticity, 
their  rudeness,  their  apparent  lack,  not  of  culture  only,  but 
of  all  religious  principle.  We  judge  rashly. 

One  most  dear  to  the  writer,  and  who  is  now  with  God, 
happened  to  be  situated  in  some  such  circumstances  as 
these.  A  privileged  and  beautiful  soul  himself,  and  blessed 
from  his  birth  with  all  the  divinest  influences  of  a  Christian 


394 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


home  and  training,  he  found  himself  all  at  once  living  with 
people  foreign  to  him  in  religion,  in  culture,  in  manners, 
even  in  the  way  they  spoke  his  language  and  judged  of  all 
things  human  and  divine.  There  was  discontent,  aversion, 
and  a  repulsion  so  great  that  he  was  on  the  point  of  with¬ 
drawing  from  a  place  to  which,  as  events  proved,  he  had 
been  providentially  led  for  the  benefit  of  this  very  people. 

On  the  eve  of  the  day  fixed  for  his  departure,  he  dreamed 
that  he  was  traveling  in  a  mountainous  region  and  had  to 
scale  a  lofty  chain  which  opposed  itself  like  a  wall  to  his 
further  progress.  As  he  climbed  with  his  guide  the  fair 
slope  facing  the  south  and  east,  their  path  lay  through  a 
succession  of  lordly  oaks  and  chestnuts,  to  the  fir  and 
heath-covered  region  near  the  top  where  every  variety  of 
wild  flower  grew  and  scented  the  air.  But  the  steep  north¬ 
ern  acclivity  offered  a  barren  and  almost  naked  wall  of 
rock,  on  which  a  ray  of  the  sun  never  rested,  and  deep  dark 
ravines  running  down  to  the  gloomy  valley  beneath.  As 
our  young  traveler  gazed  amazed  and  impatient  at  this 
scene  of  weird  desolation,  murmuring  against  the  barren¬ 
ness  and  horrors  of  the  place,  and  contrasting  it  with  the 
smiling  and  fruitful  slopes  they  had  just  passed,  he  was 
reproved  by  his  mysterious  guide.  “  See  you  not,”  said 
he,  “that  the  cause  of  all  this  wealth  of  tree  and  shrub 
and  flower  that  you  have  been  admiring  and  praising,  is 
the  sunlight  which  floods  it  the  whole  year  round, — while 
not  one  ray  of  the  beneficent  light  ever  warms  these  steep 
walls  of  barren  rock,  or  cheers  the  deep  gloom  of  yonder 
fearful  ravines  ?  ” 

The  sleeper  awoke  to  understand  that  man’s  soul  also 
needs  the  sunlight  of  divine  grace  to  warm  its  barren  and 
rugged  nature,  its  dark  and  dangerous  sides,  into  life  and 
fertility  and  moral  loveliness.  So  he  remained  true  to  his 
post,  and  the  spot  where  that  vision  was  sent  him  now 
blooms  with  the  fairest  flowers  and  fruits  of  supernatural 
goodness. 

Let  us  also  be  warned  by  our  own  very  fretfulness,  impa¬ 
tience,  and  uncharitableness  that  it  is  not  the  Spirit  of  God 


WHAT  A  GOOD  GOVERNESS  MUST  OBSERVE. 


395 


who  inspires  our  distaste  or  aversion  ;  and  let  us  gain  his 
blessing  by  applying  ourselves,  with  his  aid,  to  bring  light 
into  the  dark  places,  and  to  make  what  is  barren  and  naked 
bloom  like  the  garden  of  God. 

Where  this  inferiority  of  culture  is  apparent  in  the  mis¬ 
tress  of  the  home, — it  must  be  your  study  never  to  allow 
her  to  feel  that  you  perceive  her  deficiency  or  that  you  are 
conscious  of  your  own  superiority.  On  the  contrary  you 
must  endeavor  to  be  more  respectful  and  deferential  than  if 
she  were  your  superior  in  intelligence  and  accomplishments, 
as  she  is  in  wealth  or  social  position. 

Should  it  so  happen,  however,  that  you  cannot  remain  in 
the  family, — no  matter  from  what  cause, — there  are  two 
things  which  it  behooves  you  to  observe  in  leaving :  the  one, 
that  you  continue  to  the  very  last  moment  to  show  yourself 
the  true  lady,  not  permitting  yourself  either  complaint  or 
quarrel,  though  never  so  bitterly  provoked, — that  not  a  word 
escapes  your  lips  that  can  lower  you  in  your  own  esteem  ; 
the  other  is,  to  make  every  sacrifice  of  feeling,  temper,  and 
even  interest,  rather  than  not  part  in  perfect  friendship  with 
the  family. 

But,  supposing  the  worst, — that  you  cannot  leave,  and 
that  your  life  is  almost  made  intolerable, — we  cannot  im¬ 
press  on  you  too  strongly  the  necessity  of  strengthening 
your  soul  by  prayer,  by  the  sacraments,  and  by  an  unfail¬ 
ing  trust  in  God.  There  is  a  precious  lesson  in  this  well- 
known  song: 

“  One  by  one  the  sands  are  flowing,  one  by  one  the  moments  fall ; 

Some  are  coming,  some  are  going,  do  not  strive  to  grasp  them  all. 

One  by  one  thy  duties  wait  thee,  let  thy  whole  strength  go  to  each  ; 

Let  no  future  dreams  elate  thee, — learn  thou  first  what  these  can  teach. 

One  by  one  (bright  gifts  from  Heaven),  joys  are  sent  thee  here  below  ; 

Take  them  readily  when  given,  ready,  too,  to  let  them  go. 

One  by  one  thy  griefs  shall  meet  thee  ;  do  not  fear  an  armed  band  ; 

One  will  fade  as  others  greet  thee,  shadows  passing  through  the  land. 

Do  not  look  at  life’s  long  sorrow  ;  see  how  small  each  moment’s  pain  ; 

God  will  help  thee  for  to-morrow, — so  each  day  begin  again. 

Every  hour  that  fleets  so  slowly  has  its  task  to  do  or  bear  ; 

Luminous  the  crown,  and  holy,  when  each  gem  is  set  with  care. 


396 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Do  not  linger  with  regretting,  or  for  passing  hours  despond ; 

Nor  the  daily  toil  forgetting,  look  too  eagerly  beyond.  ; 

Hours  are  golden  links,  God’s  token,  reaching  heaven  ;  but  one  by  one 
Take  them,  lest  the  chain  be  broken,  ere  the  pilgrimage  be  done.”  * 

» 

Were  it  given  to  every  one  of  yon, — as  to  an  only  and 
beloved  sister  in  the  chivalrous  days  of  old, — to  arm  your 
brother  as  God’s  own  knight,  and  to  send  him  forth  to  do 
and  dare  and  bear  the  utmost  for  the  cause  of  the  oppressed 
and  the  captive,  would  you  hold  him  back  because  it  might 
become  his  fate  to  be  taken  prisoner  by  the  infidels  or  by 
some  rude  son  of  violence  and  blood  and  detained  in  bond¬ 
age  for  years  %  The  annals  of  these  glorious  ages  say  that 
many  a  brave  youth  so  detained  made  of  his  bonds  the 
means  of  enlightening  his  infidel  captors,  or  of  converting 
from  their  evil  ways  unchristian  Christians. 

You,  women, — you,  young  women,  particularly, — are  to 
revive  the  chivalrous  spirit  of  old,  by  arming  yourselves  with 
an  invincible  faith  and  patience — and  seizing  every  oppor¬ 
tunity  and  employing  every  occupation  of  yours  to  illumi¬ 
nate  the  dark  places,  and  to  plant  the  cross  of  Christ  and 
the  love  of  the  Crucified  in  every  home  and  heart  to  which 
you  have  access.  So, — be  brave-hearted,  work,  and  wait! 

“  A  little  longer  yet— a  little  longer, 

Shall  violets  bloom  for  thee  and  sweet  birds  sing ; 

And  the  lime  branches  where  soft  winds  are  blowing 
Shall  murmur  the  sweet  promise  of  the  Spring  ! 

“  A  little  longer  yet — a  little  longer, 

Life  shall  be  thine  ;  life  with  its  power  to  will ; 

Life  with  its  strength  to  bear,  to  love,  to  conquer. 

Bringing  its  thousand  joys  thy  heart  to  fill. 


“  A  little  longer  yet — a  little  longer. 

The  voices  thou  hast  loved  shall  charm  thine  ear  ; 
And  thy  true  heart,  that  now  beats  quick  to  hear  them, 
A  little  longer  yet  shall  hold  them  dear.”  f 


*  Adelaide  Anne  Procter. 


f  Ibidem. 


IN  CANADA. 


397 


SCHOOL-TEACHERS. 

The  rules  given  above  to  governesses,  as  well  for  tlieir 
spiritual  advancement,  as  for  their  intellectual  improve¬ 
ment,  their  thoroughness  in  every  branch  they  undertake  to 
teach,  their  devotion  to  their  pupils,  and  their  general  de¬ 
portment,  apply  to  this  most  numerous  and  most  respecta¬ 
ble  class  of  women, — young  women,  for  the  most  part,  in 
our  country. 

To  parents  who  destine  their  daughters  for  this  most  im¬ 
portant  and  most  honorable  profession,  as  well  as  to  young 
girls  who  feel  impelled  toward  it,  there  is  one  suggestion 
we  feel  bound  to  make.  Let  no  influence  or  temptation  ever 
induce  the  former  to  send  their  daughters  to  mixed  colleges 
or  normal  schools,  or  the  young  girls  themselves  to  consent 
to  go  there.  It  is  one  of  those  extreme  cases  where  parents 
who  fear  God,  instead  of  using  their  authority  to  throw 
their  innocent  children  in  the  way  of  certain  danger,  are 
bound  on  the  contrary  to  use  it  in  dissuading  and  pre¬ 
venting  them  from  a  course  fraught  with  peril. 

SPECIAL  TRAINING  FOR  SCHOOL-TEACHERS  :  IN  ENGLAND. 

We  are  addressing  our  advice  to  Catholic  parents,  of 
course ;  to  those  of  other  denominations  we  have  no  right 
to  speak.  In  England  the  pupil-teachers  who  are  preparing 
to  graduate  as  school-mistresses  receive  a  special  training 
from  the  Sisters  of  Notre  Dame  de  Namur,  or  from  the  Sis¬ 
terhood  of  the  Holy  Child  Jesus,  both  of  which  were  espe¬ 
cially  selected  by  the  Government,  in  conjunction,  with  the 
bishops,  as  the  persons  best  fitted  to  train  young  girls  for 
this  vocation. 

IN  CANADA. 

In  Canada,  Government  has  intrusted  the  female  depart¬ 
ment  of  the  Laval  Normal  School  to  the  Ursulines  of  Quebec, 
and  in  Montreal  to  another  sisterhood  equally  eminent  for 


398 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


their  method  of  imparting  instruction.  The  professors  of 
the  normal  schools  repeat  their  lessons  in  the  convent,  a 
grating  separating  them  from  their  pupils,  and  one  or  two 
members  of  the  community  always  presiding  during  this 
course  of  instruction.  They,  as  well  as  the  junior  members 
of  their  own  order  who  wish  to  profit  by  the  special  lessons 
thus  given,  see  every  thing  without  being  themselves  seen 
by  the  gentlemen  professors. 

Let  no  one  say  that  such  a  manner  of  proceeding  is  prud¬ 
ish  or  monkish  or  medieval :  all  we  know  is,  that  it  has 
covered  the  country  with  most  admirable  school-teachers, 
while  affording  the  latter  the  inestimable  benefit  of  living 
beneath  a  roof  which  protects  their  innocence,  and  of  being 
associated  with  the  sisterhood  in  their  magnificent  schools, 
which  thus  serve  them  as  a  practical  training-school. 

HIGH  STAND AED  OF  EXCELLENCE. 

This  continual  seeking  after  the  highest  excellence,  both 
in  the  sciences  to  be  acquired  and  in  the  methods  of  com¬ 
municating  knowledge  to  others,  has  a  most  elevating  effect 
on  the  Sisters  themselves  as  well  as  on  the  pupil-teachers. 
It  compels  the  former, — even  were  they  inclined  to  be  sat¬ 
isfied  with  a  low  standard  of  excellence, — to  aim  at  having 
in  their  own  professors  and  in  their  methods  the  very  high¬ 
est  ideal,  and  of  never  being  satisfied  with  mediocrity  or  a 
wretched  system  of  make-shifts. 

It  is  the  wish  and  the  aim  of  the  hierarchy  in  the  United 
States  to  have  for  all  Catholic  schools  teachers  trained  to 
this  twofold  superiority  of  knowledge  and  method,  as  well  as 
moral  purity.  This  is  a  result  which  all  good  Catholics  and 
good  citizens  are  bound  to  promote  by  every  means  within 
their  power.  For  on  our  success  in  forming  school-teachers 
equal  at  least,  if  not  superior,  to  all  others  in  attainments 
and  practical  ability, —  and  decidedly  superior  in  living 
faith  and  practical  piety, — depends  not  only  the  welfare 
of  the  Republic,  but  the  honor  and  prosperity  of  religion 
itself. 


IMPORTANCE  OF  PROPER  REMUNERATION. 


399 


So,  in  religions  communities,  where  such  young  girls  are 
formed,  no  pains  or  sacrifice  should  be  spared  to  make  them 
perfect  and  unexceptionable  in  every  way ;  every  such 
pupil  sent  out  from  our  academies  ought  to  be  enabled  to 
take  her  stand  at  once  before  the  public  as  an  accomplished 
teacher  and  a  trustworthy  teacher.  In  our  parish  schools 
the  formation  of  these  young  girls  ought*  to  be  for  the  pas¬ 
tor,  and  for  all  who  assist  him  in  the  divine  labors  of  educa¬ 
tion,  a  matter  of  unremitting  zeal.  While  directors  of  con¬ 
science,  when  they  have  discovered  what  is  the  bent  of  these 
young  girls,  ought  to  bestow  on  their  guidance  and  instruc¬ 
tion  in  solid  and  enlightened  piety  more  than  ordinary 
care. 

The  whole  future  of  the  Church  and  the  country  lies  in 
this  very  point. 

IMPORT  AN  CE  OF  PROPER  REMUNERATION. 

To  our  magistrates,  legislators,  and  public  men  who  have 
not  only  the  making  and  administration  of  our  laws,  but 
the  distribution  of  the  public  money  and  the  remuneration 
of  every  public  trust  and  service, — we  would  earnestly 
represent :  that  of  all  the  professions  devoted  to  the  service 
of  the  commonwealth  not  one  is  more  worthy  of  respect 
and  liberal  support  than  that  whose  sole  occupation  is  to 
educate  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  laboring  classes, — 
and  not  one,  at  this  writing,  is  more  exposed  to  be  sacrificed 
to  the  illiberal  and  ignorant  cupidity  of  our  municipal 
politicians. 

Defenseless  young  women,  who  have  spent  all  their  years 
since  early  girlhood  in  fitting  themselves  for  this  most  im¬ 
portant  function  of  public  teaching,  are  not  only  over¬ 
worked,  but  they  are  underpaid,  and  are  threatened  with  a 
further  reduction  of  the  wretched  pittance  received  from 
the  people’s  money. 

They  are  the  daughters  of  the  people, — intrusted  with 
the  performance  of  the  labor  of  all  others  most  affecting 
the  homes  and  happiness  of  the  people.  We  appeal  to 


400 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


the  people  to  see  to  it  that  their  hard-earned  money  go 
rather  to  the  support,  independence,  and  necessary  comfort 
of  this  devoted  class  of  teachers,  than  to  swell  the  already 
too  rich  gains  of  so  many  functionaries  without  any  thing 
like  a  serious  function  to  perform. 

ADVICE  TO  THE  TEACHERS  THEMSELVES. 

To  the  teachers  themselves  we  cannot  too  earnestly  rec¬ 
ommend  a  sincere  love  of  their  profession,  a  firm  determi¬ 
nation  to  rise  daily  to  a  higher  degree  of  excellence  both  in 
their  knowledge  and  method  of  teaching,  a  love  of  their 
holy  work  for  the  sake  of  the  work  itself,  and  a  fervent 
piety  which  will  not  only  enable  them  to  see  God  present 
in  the  school-room  and  aiding  their  own  earnest  labors,  but 
God’s  angels  too,  invisibly  present  and  seconding  every 
effort  to  enlighten  the  young  minds  and  hearts  intrusted 
to  them. 

DEVOTION  TO  THE  GUARDIAN  ANGELS. 

Never  begin  your  class  without  a  prayer  to  the  Guardian 
Angels ;  make  your  little  ones  join  you  in  it.  Give  them 
an  early  knowledge  and  love  of  these  glorious  spirits  ;  teach 
them  what  their  ministry  is  toward  us, — who  are  God’s 
adopted  children.  This  will  easily  seize  upon  intelligence, 
imagination,  and  affections.  This  sweet  and  most  beautiful 
devotion  to  the  holy  angels  appeals  easily  to  the  heart  of 
childhood ;  and,  besides,  it  places  the  mind  of  youth  in 
the  central  truth  of  the  entire  supernatural  order  of  which 
Christ  is  King,  and  these  great  spirits  are  the  administra¬ 
tors  in  our  behalf. 

PATIENCE  WITH  PERVERSE  PUPILS  AND  PARENTS. 

Do  not  be  cast  down  or  discouraged  in  your  divine  work 
of  doing  the  best  you  can  with  every  child  committed  to 
you,  either  by  the  rudeness  or  perverseness  of  the  children 
themselves,  or  by  the  ignorance  or  stupidity  of  the  parents. 


IN  DEEPEST  DISCOURAGEMENT  SEEK  CHRIST.  401 

Well  do  we  know  liow  much  the  work  of  education  depends 
on  the  sympathy,  the  support,  the  cordial  co-operation  of 
the  parents.  Well  also  know  we  how  dispiriting  it  is  to 
find  any  thing  but  sympathy  or  support  from  those  to 
whom  one  would  naturally  look  for  both ;  how  the  head 
aches  and  the  heart  burns,  when  a  superior  is  cold  or  indif¬ 
ferent  where  he  ought  to  be  fervent  in  his  praise  and  most 
zealous  in  his  assistance,  or  when  a  stolid  father  or  peevish 
mother  interferes  to  prevent  all  reformation  or  progress  in  a 
child,  or  to  ruin  discipline  by  taking  away  from  the  teacher 
all  authority. 

IN  DEEPEST  DISCOURAGEMENT  SEEK  CHRIST. 

4 

These  hardships, — of  general  and  daily  occurrence, — 
make  the  load  a  poor  teacher  has  to  bear  intolerable  :  and 
what  can  we  say  to  each  one  of  you,  who  faint  beneath 
your  burden,  without  a  voice  to  cheer  you  or  a  hand  to 
raise  you  up  \  This :  Look  to  Him  who  is  ever  by  your 
side,  especially  in  your  hour  of  trial.  “  The  whole  life  of 
Christ  was  a  cross  and  a  martyrdom  :  and  dost  thou  seek 
for  thyself  rest  and  joy  \  Thou  errest,  thou  errest,  if  thou 
seekest  aught  else  than  to  suffer  tribulation  ;  for  this  whole 
mortal  life  is  full  of  miseries  and  everywhere  marked  with 
crosses.  .  .  .  Set  thyself,  then,  like  a  good  and  faithful 

servant  of  Christ,  to  bear  manfully  the  cross  of  thy  Lord, 
for  the  love  of  Him  who  was  crucified  for  thee.”  * 

And  here  is  the  voice  of  human  wisdom  and  common 
sense  helping  to  cheer  you  on  your  way  : 

“  I  think  we  are  too  ready  with  complaint 
In  this  fair  world  of  God’s.  Had  we  no  hope 
Indeed  beyond  the  zenith  and  the  slope 
Of  yon  gray  blank  of  sky,  we  might  be  faint 
To  muse  upon  eternity’s  constraint 
Round  our  aspirant  souls.  But  since  the  scope 
Must  widen  early,  is  it  well  to  droop 
For  a  few  days  consumed  in  loss  and  taint  ? 


26 


*  “Imitation  of  Christ,”  b.  ii.,  ch.  xii. 


402 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRTJE  WOMANHOOD . 


O  pusillanimous  heart,  he  comforted, — 

And,  like  a  cheerful  traveler,  take  the  road. 
Singing  beside  the  hedge.  What  if  the  bread 
Be  better  in  thine  inn,  and  thou  unshod 
To  meet  the  flints  ? — At  least  it  may  be  said, 

*  Because  the  way  is  short,  I  thank  thee,  God  !  ’  ”  * 


*  Mrs.  Browning. 


CHAPTER  XX. 


THE  TOILEES  OF  THE  SHOP  AND  THE  LOOM. 

’Tis  also  well  to  tell  thy  heart 
That  good  lies  in  the  bitterest  part. 

And  thou  wilt  profit  by  her  smart. 

But  bitter  hours  come  to  all : 

When  even  truths  like  these  will  pall. 

Sick  hearts  for  humbler  comforts  call. 

Then  I  would  have  thee  strive  to  see 
That  good  and  evil  come  to  thee. 

As  one  of  a  great  family. 

Then  strive  more  gladly  to  fulfill 
Thy  little  part.  This  darkness  still 
Is  light  to  every  living  will. 

One  only  knows.  Yet  if  the  fret 
Of  thy  weak  heart,  in  weak  regret 
Needs  a  more  tender  comfort  yet  : 

Then  thou  mayst  take  thy  loneliest  fears. 

The  bitterest  drops  of  all  thy  tears. 

The  dreariest  hours  of  all  thy  years  ; 

And  through  thy  anguish  there  outspread. 

May  ask  that  God’s  great  love  would  shed 
.  Blessings  on  one  beloved  head. 

And  thus  thy  soul  shall  learn  to  draw 
Sweetness  from  out  that  loving  law 
That  sees  no  failure  and  no  flaw 
Where  all  is  good.  And  life  is  good. 

Were  the  one  lesson  Understood 
Of  its  most  sacred  brotherhood. 

Adelaide  Anne  Procter. 

THE  DIVINE  COMFOETS  OF  POVEETY  AND  TOIL. 

Veeily,  without  this  magnificent  brotherhood  between 
angels  and  men,  and  between  man  and  God  himself  incar¬ 
nate  in  the  son  of  Mary  and  become  the  elder  brother  of  us 

403 


404 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


all, — there  would  be  but  little  light  to  cheer  the  dark  places 
of  perpetual  and  hopeless  toil,  but  little  comfort  to  warm 
poverty  shivering  over  the  expiring  embers  on  her  hearth¬ 
stone,  with  scarcely  a  morsel  of  bread  for  to-day  and  naught 
but  bitter  forebodings  for  the  morrow.  What  would  the 
world  be, — even  the  labor  world  of  our  free  America, — with¬ 
out  the  faith  in  Him  who  said,  “  Blessed  are  the  poor !  .  .  . 
For  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  heaven!”  Oh!  fools,  fools 
that  we  are  ever  for  one  moment  to  forget  or  overlook 
the  sublime,  the  all-embracing  reality,  that  we  are  the 
heirs  of  eternal  bliss,  toiling,  suffering,  humiliated  for  a 
little  space  of  life,  to  rest,  to  enjoy,  to  be  glorified  ever¬ 
lastingly. 

We  are  drawing  near  Christmas-tide,  with  its  entrancing 
memories, — its  cavern  by  the  roadside,  the  crib,  the  Babe,  the 
two  worshiping  figures  of  Mary  and  Joseph,  the  exultant 
music  that  streams  down  from  heaven,  and  the  poor  shep¬ 
herds  hastening  to  the  new-born  King.  The  Church  cannot 
contain  the  joy  which  floods  her  maternal  heart  at  the  sight 
of  our  Elder  Brother  thus  beginning  his  life  of  toil  and 
poverty  and  suffering,  and  at  the  heavenly  glory  which 
floods  that  wretched  cave,  floods  the  hills  around  with 
their  poor  weary  watchers,  floods  the  crowd  of  poor  wor¬ 
shipers  round  that  manger  throne,  the  royal  maid  and  her 
carpenter  husband,  and  these  shepherds  with  their  gar¬ 
ments  all  wet  with  the  heavy  dews  of  midnight ;  and  so, 
even  after  the  joyous  season  has  passed,  she  sings,  as  her 
look  is  upward  to  the  “  multitude  of  the  heavenly  host,” 
and  to  the  open  gates  of  the  everlasting  city  : 

Dies  'Denit,  dies  tua, 

In  qua  rejlorent  omnia 
Lalemur  et  nos  in  mam 
Tua  reducti  dextera. 

“  Tlie  day  returns,  this  day  of  thine. 

And  all’s  again  in  bloom  arrayed  : 

Led  safely  by  thy  hand  divine, 

May  we  the  gladsome  chorus  aid  !  ”  * 


*  Breviary  Hymn. 


TOILERS  IN  THE  SHOP. 


405 


Hail,  then,  ye  daughters  of  toil  and  poverty,  infinitely 
dear  to  the  heart  of  Jesus  Christ,  dear  to  the  heart  of  his 
poverty-loving  mother,  and  most  dear  to  that  of  royal 
Joseph, — Joseph  the  carpenter,  whose  existence  was  de¬ 
voted  to  unwearied  toil  for  the  support  of  these  two,  and 
whose  blissful  privilege  it  was  to  die  in  their  embrace, 
cheered  by  their  voice,  and  made  infallibly  sure  of  the 
eternal  joys  by  the  presence  and  the  word  of  the  Redeemer 
of  Israel !  May  he  inspire  us  with  words  of  light  and  * 
strength  that  may  find  their  way  to  your  minds  to  show 
you  in  what  a  right  royal  road  you  are  traveling,  if  yours 
be  the  path  of  hard  and  unceasing  toil, — and  reach  your 
hearts  to  make  you  love  this  divine  company  of  toilers  in 
which  our  Jesus  is  ever  chief,  and  in  which  his  most  beloved 
companions  are  the  mother  who  bore  him  and  the  faithful 
man  who  watched  over  his  infancy  and  boyhood  !  We  ap¬ 
proach  the  ranks  of  this  great  army  of  women  laborers  with 
reverence  and  awe,  seeing  at  their  head  these  three  august 
personages,  the  most  so  of  all  whose  feet  have  ever  touched 
and  hallowed  this  earth  of  ours.  And  beneath  the  eyes  of 
these  three  we  desire  to  write  every  sentence,  every  word 
in  these  remaining  pages,  that  so,  the  good  done  thereby 
and  the  consolation  brought  to  sorely  tried  hearts,  may  be 
the  pleasant  crown  of  our  toil  in  this  book. 

TOILERS  IX  THE  SHOP. 

In  those  Christian  ages  when  religion  was  free  to  lighten 
gradually  and  then  to  break  forever  the  yoke  of  the  bonds¬ 
man,  to  lighten  also  the  burden  of  the  laboring  man,  to  give 
to  labor  its  dignity  and  to  secure  to  the  laborer  by  her  edicts 
and  influence  a  just  remuneration,  there  was  offered  to  the 
world  no  spectacle  so  sad,  so  disgraceful  to  the  manhood  of 
Christendom  as  these  millions  of  women  who  in  the  most 
civilized  (!)  countries  are,  at  this  moment,  subjected  to  labors 
more  intolerable,  and  accompanied  by  prospects  of  live¬ 
lihood  much  less  certain,  than  the  worst  criminals  ever 
condemned  to  the  galleys  ! 


406 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


HOW  THE  MEDIEVAL  CHURCH  FREED  THE  SERF. 

It  may  be  well  to  see,  just  as  our  boasted  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury, — the  great  century  of  humanity , — draws  toward  its 
close,  how  the  Church  in  the  year  1060  raised  the  poor  serf, 

.  tied  down  to  labor  on  the  soil,  to  the  dignity  of  a  freeman, 
and  in  whose  name  she  did  it.  We  are  in  a  monastery 
.  where  a  solemn  assemblage  of  lords  ecclesiastical  and  tem¬ 
poral  is  held  to  bear  witness  to  a  solemn  act  of  emancipa¬ 
tion.  Here  is  the  instrument : 

“  In  the  name  of  God,  the  Almighty  Father,  and  in  the 
name  of  his  only  Son,  who  was  incarnate  to  deliver  men 
from  the  slavery  of  sin,  and  to  adopt  them  as  his  sons,  we, 
that  He  may  deign  to  remit  us  the  sins  that  we  have  com¬ 
mitted,  restore  to  liberty  our  men  who  have  been  subject  to 
the  yoke  of  servitude  :  for  the  Lord  God  has  said  :  Remit 
and  it  shall  be  remitted  to  you  :  and  in  speaking  to  his 
Apostles,  He  said,  You  are  all  brethren.  Therefore  if  we 
are  brethren,  we  ought  not  to  keep  any  of  our  brethren  in 
a  servitude  which  they  do  not  owe  to  us,  as  Truth  himself 
declares,  Let  no  man  call  you  master, — blaming  less  the 
arrogance  of  human  pride,  than  the  injustice  of  domina¬ 
tion:  that  is  why  we  emancipate  from  all  servitude  our 
serfs,  both  men  and  women.”  * 

HOW  SERVITUDE  IS  RESTORED  m  OUR  MIDST. 

> 

How  happens  it  that  in  this  great  city  of  Hew  York  there 
is  an  army  of  women, — young  for  the  most  part,  some  of 
them  scarcely  emerged  from  early  girlhood, — whose  num¬ 
bers  are  daily  increasing,  and  who  are  as  helplessly,  almost 
as  hopelessly,  the  slaves  of  our  wealthy  shopkeepers,  as  if 
they  were  born  bondwomen  on  their  hearths, — and  bound 
to  give  their  taskmasters  unlimited  labor  without  the  legal 
right  to  be  housed,  clothed,  cared  for  in  illness,  or  secured 
by  their  owners  against  sheer  starvation  ? 


*  Archives  de  Congues  dans  les  Memoires  sur  le  Rouergue. 


HARD  LOT  OF  DRESS-MAKERS. 


407 


Taking  those  among  the  weary  toilers  who  are  supposed 
to  stand  at  the  head  of  their  class,  the  head  dress-makers 
and  saleswomen, — though  compelled  to  wear  costlier  attire 
than  their  sister  seamstresses,  they  are  not  much  better  off 
in  the  way  of  remuneration.  A  head  dress-maker  has  to 
serve  an  apprenticeship  of  several  years  of  the  hardest  labor 
and  closest  application  before  she  can  hope  for  steady  em¬ 
ployment.  During  this  long  and  laborious  preparation  she 
has  to  support  herself  and  to  dress  well ;  and,  when  she  does 
succeed  in  finding  a  position,  her  scanty  wages  go  almost 
entirely  toward  providing  herself  with  the  stylish  and  costly 
raiment  which  her  employer  insists  on  her  wearing,  in  order, 
as  he  says,  to  please  the  fashionable  customers  who  daily 
pass  through  her  hands  for  measurement,  etc.  .  .  .  Then, 
again,  she  is  responsible  for  the  work  of  her  aids  and  of 
all  the  seamstresses  who  work  under  her  direction.  Stuffs 
lost  or  spoiled,  dresses  wrongly  made,  etc.,  are  placed  to 
her  account.  We  say  nothing  of  the  jealousies  and  count¬ 
less  annoyances  inseparable  from  such  a  position. 

HAED  LOT  OF  DEESS-MAKEES. 

Together  with  this  cruel  responsibility  there  is  toil  with^ 
out  cessation,  both  for  the  head  dress -maker  and  for  all 
under  her.  How  ill  requited  are  these  interminable  days, 
and,  not  unfrequently,  sleepless  nights,  we  need  not  say. 
The  strongest  constitutions  soon  give  way,  and  the  ruin 
thus  wrought  is  irreparable.  No  medical  skill  avails  to 
build  up  again  a  frame  overworked  long  before  its  maturity, 
or,  what  is  more,  to  raise  up  the  spirit  hopelessly  broken 
by  a  long  struggle  against  fatigue  and  poverty,  intolerable 
tyranny  and  utter  despair,  at  an  age  when  a  young  girl 
needs  the  open  air  and  the  sunlight,  and  all  that  is  most 
pleasant  and  cheering  in  God’ s  bright  world. 

There  are  other  hardships,  other  dangers — of  a  still  more 
serious  natnre,  and  to  which  we  would  fain  not  be  forced 
even  to  allude.  Let  us,  therefore,  give  this  class  one  word 
of  advice  and  exhortation. 


408 


TIIE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


ADVICE  TO  DEESS-MAKEES  AND  SALESWOMEN. 

Respect  yourselves  sovereignly  ;  and,  precisely  because 
you  are  poor,  dependent,  and  constrained  to  do  bard  work 
for  very  little  money,  never  permit  any  one  placed  above 
you  in  your  labor,  so  much  as  to  breathe  a  word  capable  of 
bringing  a  blush  to  your  cheek.  That  you  are  dependent 
on  your  labor  is  not  a  shame,  nor  a  disgrace,  nor  a  sin  ; 
your  poverty  is  honorable,  your  anxious  desire  to  make 
your  labor  yield  aid  and  support  to  the  dear  ones  at  home 
as  well  as  to  yourself,  is  most  honorable  to  you  ; — but  your 
virtue  is  God’ s  treasure  as  well  as  your  own  most  precious 
fortune :  guard  it  with  the  spirit,  the  pride,  the  indomi¬ 
table  courage  that  become  one  who  knowTs  herself  to  be  “  a 
child  of  God.” 

You  need  not  be  told  whence  these  dangers  threaten  you 
in  your  sacred  honor  :  they  come  from  the  very  necessity, 
sometimes,  of  being  dressed  above  your  means, — more  fre¬ 
quently  still  from  that  natural  vanity  wdiich  makes  one  de¬ 
sire  to  appear  as  well  as  persons  of  one’ s  own  age  and  class, 
and  whose  rich  dress  seems  to  make  them  beings  of  a  differ¬ 
ent  order.  “  Handsome  is  who  handsome  does  !  ”  Remem¬ 
ber  it  well. 

Then,  be  punctual  to  hours,  be  faithful  and  conscientious 
in  your  labor ;  be  strictly  and  most  scrupulously  careful 
never  to  keep  or  lose  or  waste  the  most  trilling  portion  of 
what  is  committed  to  you.  And  to  this  high-principled 
honesty  add  a  truthfulness  that  would  scorn  to  equivocate 
or  prevaricate  in  any  circumstance,  even  when  your  horror 
of  falsehood  may  cost  you  your  place. 

There  is  a  class  of  women  toilers  worse  off  even  than  the 
seamstresses  or  milliners  ;  they  are  the  saleswomen,  wrho 
have  to  dress  very  expensively,  to  be  on  their  feet  twelve  or 
thirteen  hours  daily,  without  being  permitted  to  sit  down 
once  !  and  yet  they  are  exposed  at  any  moment  to  be  dis¬ 
charged  without  warning  or  reason.  There  is  not  a  morn¬ 
ing  on  which,  at  their  arrival  at  the  shop  door,  they  are  not 
liable  to  be  told  that  their  services  are  not  needed ! 


AN  INSTANCE  ILLUSTRATING  A  SYSTEM. 


409 


MODERN  LEGISLATION  HEEDLESS  OF  THIS  SERVITUDE. 

We  hasten  over  these  details  with  an  indignation  which 
we  can  but  ill  conceal ;  and  yet  we  only  touch  very,  very 
lightly  on  a  few  points,  and  not  the  worst  points  either,  of 
a  system  which  is  daily  growing  in  its  oppressiveness,  its 
pitiless  cruelty  toward  the  young  of  the  weaker  -  sex  ;  and 
no  man]y  voice  is  raised  to  protect  them  ! 

Besides,  our  indignation  is  all  the  more  righteous,  that 
our  boasted  civilization  and  improved  statesmanship  aim 
daily  at  ignoring  more  and  more  the  protecting  agencies 
employed  in  former  times  by  the  august  Mother  of  nations 
and  individuals,  to  shield  women  of  every  age, — the  girl  and 
the  maiden,  particularly, — against  the  tyrannies  of  labor, 
the  sufferings  of  extreme  want,  and  the  many  temptations 
to  which  youth  and  poverty  expose  the  sex.  Alas !  the 
day  is  past  when  that  Mother  could  raise  her  voice  and 
compel  the  manufacturer  and  the  shopkeeper,  under  pain 
of  ruin  temporal  and  eternal,  to  be  just,  to  be  kind,  to  be 
chaste,  and  fatherly ;  and  compel,  if  need  were,  the  sove¬ 
reign,  the  legislator,  and  the  magistrate  to  interpose  their 
authority  between  pitiless  greed  and  helpless  indigence  ! 

AN  INSTANCE  ILLUSTRATING  A  SYSTEM. 

One  instance  may  here  show  both  the  magnitude  of  the 
evil  we  complain  of,  and  the  simple  heroism  to  be  met  with 
in  the  class  which  are  its  victims.  “ Happening” — says 
our  lady  informant — “to  have  some  dresses  ordered  for 
myself  and  my  family,  I  went  into  one  of  the  largest  of  our 
city  establishments.  After  purchasing  the  silks  needed,  I 
was  taken  up  stairs  to  the  head  dress-maker, — a  pale,  sweet- 
featured,  and  simply  dressed  person  of  about  twenty-three 
years  of  age.  She  was  exceedingly  respectful  and  ladylike, 
and  made  quite  an  impression  on  me  by  the  air  of  fatigue 
which  was  apparent  in  her  very  voice  as  well  as  in  her  eyes, 
and  by  the  lines  of  extreme  sadness  and  sweetness  about 


410 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


her  mouth.  It  was,  however,  only  on  my  second  visit,  and 
while  fitting  on  some  of  the  new  dresses  that,  finding  her¬ 
self  alone  with  me,  the  poor  girl  ventured  to  open  her  heart. 
4 Forgive  me,  madam,’  she  said,  ‘if  I  make  so  bold  as  to 
address  you  on  something  personal  to  me.  I  knew,  the  mo¬ 
ment  I  saw  you,  that  you  were  a  Catholic,  and  felt  drawn 
to  you.  .  .  .  Indeed  I  need  counsel  and  sympathy,  for 

I  am  almost  in  despair.  Since  ever  I  came  to  this  place,  I 
have  labored  most  devotedly  to  make  myself  useful,  to 
please  both  my  employer  and  his  customers ;  and  I  have 
reason  to  think  that  in  every  respect  but  one  they  have 
good  cause  to  be  satisfied  with  my  work.  This  sole  Cause 
of  dissatisfaction — though  they  have  not  expressed  it  in 
words — comes  from  my  not  dressing  as  stylishly  as  they 
wish.  With  true  ladies  or  gentlewomen  like  you,  there  is 
no  difficulty  :  they  do  not  object  to  my  plain  but  neat  black 
dress,  and  as  I  treat  them  with  all  proper  respect  and  am 
successful  in  suiting  their  tastes,  they  always  go  away  well 
pleased  and  are  sure  to  return  to  me.  But  there  are  other 
fashionably-dressed  ladies,  who  are  not  of  your  class,  and 
do  not  know  much  about  good  manners  or  the  refinement 
and  gentleness  that  a  true  lady  shows  in  dealing  with  her 
inferiors.  These  on  coming  up  here  and  seeing  me  so  sim¬ 
ply  dressed  cannot  conceal  their  contempt  and  dissatisfac¬ 
tion.  This  is  noticed  by  my  assistants,  who,  as  you  see,  are 
much  better  dressed  than  I  am,  and  who  are,  besides,  jeal¬ 
ous  of  my  position  here, — though,  God  knows,  neither  look 
nor  word  of  mine  has  ever  wounded  them.  I  am  satisfied 
that  they  have  reported  all  this  to  my  employer,  for  this 
very  morning  I  saw  an  advertisement  in  one  of  the  daily 
papers  calling  for  a  head  dress-maker  who  can  afford  to 
dress  stylishly.  .  .  . 

‘“I  have  an  aged  father  and  mother  absolutely  depending4 
on  me  at  this  moment, — for  my  brothers  have  been  for  more 
than  six  months  idle,  and  have  vainly  sought  to  find  work 
of  any  kind.  Thus,  living  as  we  do,  not  only  economically 
but  poorly,  and  refusing  ourselves  every  thing  that  is  not 
strictly  necessary,  you  can  imagine  how  impossible  it  is  for 


THE  GLORIOUS  SIDE  OF  MODERN  INDUSTRY.  4H 

me  to  dress  stylishly.  I  know  that  there  are  others  around 
me  who  do  so,  and  can  no  more  afford  it  than  I  can.  But 
God  forbid  I  should  accept  rich  robes  and  jewelry  at  the 
price  they  pay  for  theirs  !  So,  you  see,  how  heavy  my  heart 
is,  and  what  a  relief  it  is  to  unburden  it  to  one  like  you. 
For,  to  my  employer  I  could  never  make  known  the  dis¬ 
tress  and  poverty  of  my  father’s  home.’  ” 

How  it  has  fared  with  this  interesting  and  conscientious 
girl  our  informant  could  not  tell  us.  The  case,  on  the 
whole,  is  a  very  mild  one.  Bat  it  affords  a  glimpse  of  the 
aching  heads  and  weary  hearts  that  are  to  be  found  in  these 
great  palaces  of  fashion  to  which  our  wealthy  women  daily 
resort,  without  ever  knowing  or  caring  to  know  aught  of  the 
tragedies  that  fill  the  lives  of  these  heavy-eyed  and  heavy- 
souled  girls  who  stand  behind  the  counters  or  wait  on  them 
in  the  milliner’s  rooms. 

WOMEN  IN  MANUFACTURES. 

We  have  mentioned  the  words  milliner  and  seamstress ; 
they  form  an  army  by  themselves.  Of  the  still  greater 
army  of  women  employed  in  fabricating  the  rich  and  gor¬ 
geous  materials  that  fill  our  merchants’  warehouses,  as  well 
as  the  hundreds  of  other  articles  that  are  known  to  trade 
as  the  special  industry  of  women, — we  could  now  wish  to 
speak  befittingly.  It  is  a  hard  task.  But  let  us  draw  a 
picture  of  these  mighty  hosts  of  women  toilers  from  a 
work  just  now  passing  through  the  press,  and  compiled 
from  the  most  authentic  and  the  best  official  sources. 

THE  GLORIOUS  SIDE  OF  MODERN  INDUSTRY. 

“  What  is  called  la  grande  Industrie  has  given  birth  in 
the  present  age  to  so  many  wonders,  and  so  many  marvel¬ 
ous  creations,  that  we  are  too  apt  to  forget  what  has  been 
the  cost  of  all  this  progress.  When  we  go  into  one  of  these 
exposition  buildings  where  all  the  masterpieces  of  strength, 
patience,  skill,  and  taste  lie  before  us  in  splendid  array,  we 


412 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


cannot  help  yielding  to  a  warm  sentiment  of  admiration  and 
gratitude  toward  that  resistless  power  which  is  laboring  un¬ 
ceasingly  to  transform  the  face  of  the  earth.  Here  are  light, 
soft,  silky  tissues  whose  mingled  colors  remind  one  of  the 
brightest  flowers, — cloudy-looking  gauzes  whose  warp  and 
woof  are  invisible  to  the  eye,  sparkling  gems  which  the 
miner  dug  up  from  the  earth  under  the  shape  of  a  dull  peb¬ 
ble,  and  whose  artistic  setting  combines  all  the  elegant  fan¬ 
cies  of  every  age  and  clime.  Over  there  are  still  greater 
wonders;  .  .  .  telescopes,  which  shall  soon  leave  the 

Armament  without  a  single  unexplained  mystery,  and  ren¬ 
der  daily  the  impress  of  the  divine  hand  more  manifest ; 
microscopes,  which  in  exploring  the  infinitely  small  almost 
equal  in  analytical  power  the  creative  power  itself.  Further 
on  you  see  these  prodigious  furnaces  that  produce  weekly  as 
much  as  two  thousand  tons  of  iron,  these  stupendous  pieces 
of  machinery  with  which  you  might  think  you  could  move 
the  world,  these  mechanical  forces  which,  if  combined, 
would  equal  the  force  of  gravitation  of  this  terrestial  globe  ; 
and  then,  again,  the  wonders  of  steam  navigation,  of  rail¬ 
road  traveling,  and  photography  ;  in  fine,  that  electric  cord 
which  will  soon  inclose  the  earth  in  a  symbolic  circle,  place 
us  in  instantaneous  communication  with  our  antipodes,  and 
thus  enable  science  to  begin  to  realize  the  great  unity  of  the 
human  race  foreshown  by  the  gospel. 

“In  presence  of  such  an  exhibition  one  almost  feels  one’s 
self  becoming  a  pagan,  deifying  over  again  human  might 
and  genius.  .  .  . 

“  Such  is  the  song  of  triumph  and  thanksgiving  which  in¬ 
dustry  breathes  into  her  sons,  and  which  all  of  us,  on  cer¬ 
tain  occasions,  find  ourselves  singing.  But  we  should  soon 
change  our  language  if  we  could  only  see  the  wonder¬ 
worker  at  her  task  in  her  own  laboratory.  We  should  won¬ 
derfully  moderate  our  enthusiasm  if  we  only  knew  how 
much  the  masterpieces  displayed  to  our  view  have  cost,  and 
are  still  costing,  of  suffering,  tears,  and  blood, — of  lives  of 
men  and  women  and  children  !  The  inventor  has  not  been 
the  only  victim  sacrificed  to  his  love  of  science  and  human- 


1  'JL« _ 


TZZ#  MURDEROUS  SIDE  OF  MODERN  INDUSTRY.  41 3 

ity ;  not  rarely  entire  generations  have  sacrificed  tlieir 
health  in  bringing  about  a  single  industrial  progress. 

TIIE  MURDEROUS  SIDE  OF  MODERN  INDUSTRY. 

u  What  is  still  worse,  the  most  frequent  victim  of  industry 
is  not  man,  -fitted  by  his  nature  for  the  struggles  and  dan¬ 
gers  of  active  life  and  outdoor  labor  ; — it  is  woman,  it  is  the 
child  which  the  implacable  necessities  of  trade  opposition 
and  of  the  laws  of  cheap  production  sacrifice,  against  all  the 
laws  of  nature,  to  the  unceasing  toil  of  the  factory.  .  .  . 

“  Medical  science  has  drawn  up  a  list  of  the  diseases  which 
women  infallibly  contract  while  pursuing  this  sort  of  life. 
We  must  summon  courage  enough  to  read  this  long  and 
mournful  catalogue. 

“First  of  all  comes  the  woman  worker  properly  so  called, 
who  belongs  to  all  ages  and  countries, — the  seamstress. 
Bent  over  her  work  during  whole  days,  and  sometimes 
whole  nights,  she  loses  her  erect  form  and  becomes  round- 
shouldered  ;  she  frequently  becomes  a  bloodless,  consump¬ 
tive  thing,  and  almost  certainly  loses  her  sight.  If  she 
works  on  a  sewing-machine,  its  continuous  pulsations  are 
sure  to  produce  the  most  serious  organic  disorders. 

“  Girls  who  work  at  the  loom  are  equally  to  be  pitied  :  they 
are  often  quite  young  children,  and  with  their  little  unde¬ 
veloped  bodies,  and  feeble  strength,  are  forced  to  spend 
jeleven,  twelve,  and  thirteen  hours  standing  upright  near  a 
loom,  the  continuous  clatter  of  which  never  fails  in  the  long 
run  to  disturb  the  nervous  system. 

“The  woman,  the  young  girl,  whose  skilful  hands  have 
woven  the  richly-colored  stuffs  which  delight  our  eyes,  is 

I  subject  to  various  ulcers  and  other  serious  disorders  of  the 
circulation  of  the  blood,  arising  from  this  compulsory  habit 
of  standing  all  day ;  nay,  she  may  be  troubled  with  the 
painful  disease  known  as  the  noise  of  the  shuttle  evermore 
re-echoing  in  her  chest.”  * 


*  Rene  Lavollee,  La  Question  du  Travail  des  Femmes ,  in  Le  Correspond. ant  of 
October  25,  1877. 


414 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


DISEASES  OF  COTTON  AND  SILK  SPINNERS. 

We  are  all  but  too  well  acquainted  with  the  chest  dis¬ 
eases  and  hemorrhages  caused  by  the  fine  cotton  dust  or  film 
floating  in  the  atmosphere  of  large  factories :  they  destroy 
yearly  numberless  victims.  Lace-works  and  fine  embroid¬ 
eries  send  numbers  to  an  early  grave  ;  and  so  does  the  man¬ 
ufacture  of  silk  in  all  its  stages.  The  putrid  emanations 
of  the  cocoons,  and  the  steaming  processes  to  which  the 
threads  are  subjected,  produce  consumption,  vomiting  of 
blood,  and  putrid  fever  ;  while  the  carding,  etc.,  is  accom¬ 
panied  by  sore  eyes,  cerebral  fevers,  and  inflammation  of  the 
lungs. 

MORAL  DISEASES. 

We  fear  to  dwell  on  this  point.  Moralists  and  econo¬ 
mists  have  drawn  up  a  far  more  formidable  list  of  the  dis¬ 
orders  begotten  in  the  soul  by  the  atmosphere  of  the  fac¬ 
tory  and  the  workshop,  than  the  distempers  with  which  the 
body  is  afflicted,  hi  or  must  we  Americans  flatter  ourselves 
that  we  have  preserved  our  manufacturing  system  and  our 
industrial  establishments  from  the  terrible  swarm  of  evils 
which  have  settled  on  them  in  Great  Britain  or  on  the  neigh¬ 
boring  continent,  and  have  been  as  fatal  to  home-life,  to  the 
growth  of  all  the  fair  flowers  and  fruits  of  domestic  virtue, 
innocence,  and  happiness,  as  the  locust  plague  periodically® 
proves  to  the  fairest  and  most  fertile  regions  of  Africa. 

GODLESS  INDUSTRY  A  SOCIAL  PLAGUE-SPOT. 

Serious  students  of  history,  scientific  men,  and  travelers 
will  appreciate  our  purpose  in  thus  warning,  by  these  illus¬ 
trations,  the  public  conscience  in  our  own  midst.  One* 
whose  unrivaled  pen  has  written  so  many  most  beautiful 
and  instructive  volumes,  thus  describes  the  beginning  and 
progress  of  that  fearful  plague  : 


*  John  Henry  Newman. 


THE  AFRICAN  LOCUST  PLAGUE. 


415 


ILLUSTRATED  BY  THE  AFRICAN  LOCUST  PLAGUE. 

“  His  finger  was  directed  to  a  spot,  where,  amid  the  thick 
foliage,  the  gleam  of  a  pool  or  of  a  marsh  was  visible.  The 
various  waters  round  about  issuing  from  the  gravel,  or 
drained  from  the  nightly  damps,  had  run  into  a  hollow, 
filled  with  decaying  vegetation  of  former  years,  and  were 
languidly  filtered  out  into  a  brook,  more  healthy  than  the 
vast  reservoir  itself.  Its  bands  were  bordered  with  a  deep 
broad  layer  of  mud,  a  transition  substance  between  the  rich 
vegetable  matter  it  once  had  been,  and  the  multitudinous 
world  of  insect  life  which  it  was  becoming.  A  cloud  or  mist 
at  this  time  was  hanging  over  it,  high  in  air.  A  harsh  and 
shrill  sound,  a  whizzing  or  a  chirping,  proceeded  from  that 
cloud  to  the  ear  of  the  attentive  listener.  What  these  in¬ 
dications  portended  was  plain.  .  .  .  Agellius  and  his 

guest  looked  at  each  other  in  dismay.  4  It  is  the  locusts,’ 
they  whispered  to  each  other,  as  they  went  back  into  the 
cottage. 

4  4  Instances  are  recorded  in  history  of  clouds  of  the  de¬ 
vastating  insect  crossing  the  Black  Sea  to  Poland,  and  the 
Mediterranean  to  Lombardy.  It  is  as  numerous  in  its  spe¬ 
cies  as  it  is  wide  in  its  range  of  territory.  Brood  follows 
brood,  with  a  sort  of  family  likeness.  .  .  .  Even  one 

flight  comprises  myriads,  upon  myriads,  passing  imagina¬ 
tion,  to  which  the  drops  of  rain  or  the  sands  of  the  sea  are 
the  only  fit  comparison.  So  dense  are  they,  when  upon  the 
wing,  that  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  they  hide  the 
sun.  And  so  ubiquitous  are  they  when  they  have  alighted 
on  the  earth,  that  they  simply  cover  or  clothe  its  sur¬ 
face.  .  .  .  Not  only  the  crops  and  fruits,  but  the  foli¬ 

age  of  the  forest  itself,  nay,  the  small  twigs  and  the  bark  of 
the  trees  are  the  victims  of  their  curious  and  energetic  ra¬ 
pacity.  .  .  .  They  take  pains  to  spoil  what  they  leave. 

Like  the  Harpies,  they  smear  every  thing  that  they  touch 
with  a  miserable  slime,  which  has  the  effect  of  a  virus  in  cor¬ 
roding,  or,  as  some  say,  in  scorching  and  burning  it.  And 


416  THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 

then,  as  if  all  this  were  little,  when  they  can  do  nothing 
else,  they  die  ; — as  if  out  of  sheer  malevolence  to  man,  for 
the  poisonous  elements  of  their  nature  are  then  let  loose 
and  dispersed  abroad,  and  create  a  pestilence ;  and  they 
manage  to  destroy  many  more  by  their  death,  than  in  their 
life.”  * 

DANGERS  IN  A  NEW  AND  FREE  COUNTRY  : — TIIE  ARMIES  OF 

WOMEN  TOILERS. 

To  estimate  the  risk  in  a  new  country,  with  immense  un¬ 
developed  agricultural  resources,  the  danger  to  population 
and  to  morality,  threatened  by  the  probable  increase  of  the 
manufacturing  industries,  we  have  only  to  glance  at  the 
number  of  women  and  children  employed.  In  1860  there 
were  already  73, 605  women  employed  in  cotton  factories 
alone  ;  in  1870  the  entire  manufacturing  establishments  of 
the  Union  employed  323,768  women,  and  113,088  children. 
Taking  the  intermediate  year  1865,  we  find  that  the  single 
State  of  New  York  had  32,000  women  in  its  factories,  while 
Pennsylvania  counted  60,000  women,  and  Massachusetts 
had  83,000, — women  in  this  last  State  being  as  three  to  one 
in  the  woolen  and  cotton  factories.  We  are  now  near  the 
end  of  another  decade,  with  a  fearful  increase  in  these  num¬ 
bers,  in  the  proportion  especially  of  women  and  children, — 
for  manufacturers,  not  to  be  driven  off  the  market,  will 
turn  out  cheap  goods,  and  in  order  to  do  so,  they  must  em¬ 
ploy  the  cheap  labor  of  women  and  children. 

NUMBERS  OF  FACTORY  WOMEN  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

Surely  we  are  within  safe  bounds  when  we  say,  that,  at 
the  beginning  of  1878,  there  are  no  less  than  500,000  women 
and  children  employed  daily  in  factory  work  throughout 
this  great  republic,  without  counting  that  other  smaller  host 
of  toilers  in  our  city  stores  and  shops  from  year’s  end  to 
year’s  end. 


“  Callista,”  cli.  xiv.  and  xv. 


~  SOCIAL  OUTLOOK  FROM  THESE  HUMBEUS. 


417 


THE  PRODIGIOUS  HOSTS  OF  WOMEN  TOILERS  IK  EUROPE. 

Tliink  of  these  numbers, — and  then  look  beyond  the  At¬ 
lantic  to  the  fearful  hosts  of  the  same  degraded  and  sickly 
toilers  to  be  found  in  European  countries.  In  Switzerland, 
where  the  population  is  primarily  one  of  farmers  and  shep¬ 
herds,  manufacturing  industry  does  not  offer  the  physical 
or  moral  dangers  that  it  does  even  in  our  own  Northern 
States.  Nevertheless,  in  1870,  Switzerland  counted  in  her 
various  factories  62,396  women  and  9,540  children. 

In  Germany,  on  December  the  1st,  1875,  there  were  257,000 
women  employed  in  the  various  industrial  establishments 
throughout  the  empire,  of  whom  a  large  proportion  were 
children.  Belgium  has  upward  of  400,000  women  toilers; 
linen  fabrics  alone  occupying  113,000  women.  England  and 
Wales,  in  1871,  had  1,522,000  women  workers  in  their  in¬ 
dustrial  establishments  ;  and  of  that  immense  army  428,000 
were  under  twenty  years  of  age.  We  had  rather  not  speak 
of  Scotland. 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  statistics  that  enable  one  to  estimate 
what  is  the  lot  of  the  vast  majority  of  women  in  the  new 
democratic  era,  and  under  the  benign  influence  of  the  so¬ 
cialistic  civilization  whose  approach  is  daily  predicted. 

SOCIAL  OUTLOOK  FROM  THESE  NUMBERS. 

The  debasement,  the  enslavement,  the  physical,  intellec¬ 
tual,  and  moral  ruin  of  woman ;  —  the  destruction  in  the 
child  of  the  fairest  and  loveliest  promises  of  womanhood ; — 
the  destruction  of  the  poor  man’ s  home  by  the  very  toil  to 
which  industry  subjects  his  wife, — the  physical  impossi¬ 
bility  of  rearing  children,  when  the  mother  cannot  be  a  true 
mother  to  her  offspring,  nor  the  father  the  protector  of  his 
wife,  or  the  teacher  of  his  children  ; — and  the  planting  by 
the  hearthstone  of  every  laborer,  instead  of  the  cross  of 
Christ  and  the  sweet  belief  in  the  Father  of  the  Poor  and 
the  Orphan,  the  symbols  and  the  creed  of  the  new  humanity 
and  fraternity : — this,  and  much  more  than  this,  of  hopeless 


418 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


misery  and  moral  desolation,  is  to  be  the  outlook  of  that 
Christendom  which  the  Church  of  our  fathers  had  created  ? 

THE  ANCIENT  CHURCH  THE  SOLE  HELPER  OF  WOMAN. 

No, — please  God !  She  is  still  living  to  speak  to  the 
minds  and  hearts  of  the  toiling  millions,  to  cheer  and  sanc¬ 
tify  and  guard  their  homes  ;  to  bless  the  union  of  the  work¬ 
ing-man  with  his  chosen  companion,  to  baptize  their  chil¬ 
dren,  and  protect  their  souls  and  bodies  from  the  advance  of 
these  odious  doctrines,  and  the  hosts  of  impure  and  loath¬ 
some  creatures  that  undertake  to  propagate  them. 

There  is  no  authority,  no  living  institution,  no  power  on 
earth  conscious  of  its  ability  to  save  woman,  to  save  our 
homes,  to  save  society  and  civilization  from  the  joint  de¬ 
structive  forces  of  an  industry  without  a  conscience  and  a 
socialism  without  a  God,  outside  of  that  grand  old  Catholic 
Church,  to  whom  alone  have  been  made  the  promises  of 
immortal  life  and  unfailing  love  for  the  nations. 

Would  to  God  that  a  spark  of  the  divine  fire  which  ever 
burns  in  the  heart  of  the  great  Mother,  could  glow  in  our 
words,  as  we  now  address  ourselves  to  all  enlightened 
readers  in  favor  of  these  mighty  armies  of  women  toilers 
the  whole  world  over ! 

APPEAL  AGAINST  HEARTLESS  INDUSTRY. 

A 

We  warn  manufacturers  and  capitalists  of  every  kind, 
who  employ  large  numbers  of  persons,  that  they  cannot 
persist  in  violating  the  laws  of  conscience,  of  humanity,  of 
nature,  without  at  length  turning  and  banding  against  their 
heartless  greed  all  the  forces  of  the  moral  world, — nature, 
humanity,  and  conscience,  marshaled  against  them  by  a 
revolted  public  opinion. 

Spare  little  children,  spare  girls  of  tender  years,  spare 
women  who  are  burdened  with  the  cares  of  maternity. 
You  need  the  labor  of  the  poor  man  ;  you  shall  need,  pres¬ 
ently,  the  labor  of  his  sons  and  daughters :  pray  tell  us 


IT  DESTROYS  THE  HOME. 


419 


what  sort  of  children  can  that  overworked,  bloodless,  con¬ 
sumptive  woman  rear, — if  yon  persist  in  thinking,  or  in 
acting  as  if  yon  thought,  that  her  nerves  and  muscles  can 
outlast  the  iron  and  steel  of  your  machinery  ?  And  how 
often  have  your  looms  broken  down  or  got  out  of  order, 
since  she  began  her  long  labors  by  day  and  her  vigils  by 
night  in  the  midst  of  their  ceaseless  clatter  ?  You  are  careful, 
however,  to  repair  your  looms,  or  to  renew  a  broken  shaft, 
or  wheel,  or  bolt ; — but  what  care  you  for  the  restoration  of 
that  poor,  pale  woman’ s  health  when  it  gives  way  at  length, 
or  for  its  preservation  by  plentiful  and  wholesome  food,  by 
a  warm  and  comfortable  home,  by  refreshing  sleep,  and  the 
simple,  sweet  delights  of  her  own  fireside  \ 

IT  CUTS  DOWN  THE  TREE  TO  GATHER  THE  FRUIT. 

Foolish  man  !  You  do  not  cut  down  in  your  garden  the 
peach-tree,  the  pear-tree,  or  the  apple-tree  to  get  at  their 
delicious  fruit, — for,  you  are  mindful  of  the  needs  of  an¬ 
other  season  ; — you  would  not  set  fire  to  the  cotton-field  in 
spring  because  a  late  frost  had  impaired  the  prospects  of 
the  next  harvest :  are  the  homes  of  your  workmen,  and 
workwomen,  less  dear  and  less  precious  to  you, — even  in 
view  of  your  industrial  prospects,  than  the  field  in  which 
the  cotton  they  manipulate  is  grown  ?  Is  the  peach,  or  the 
pear,  or  the  apple,  a  fruit  more  rare  or  precious  in  your 
calculations  than  the  children  of  your  devoted  toilers  ? 

IT  DESTROYS  THE  CHILD,  THE  WOMAN,  AND  THE  HOME. 

Your  are  careful  to  prune  the  tree,  to  manure  it,  to 
take  every  measure  that  the  currents  of  life,  each  year, 
shall  be  renewed  and  reinvigorated  in  trunk  and  branches  ; 
and  you  exhaust  the  currents  of  life  in  the  veins  of  your 
working  men  and  women,  and  care  not  what  may  befall 
them,  provided  that  your  mills  turn  out  so  many  bales  of 
goods  at  a  stated  time.  The  child  you  employ  is  crippled 
even  before  she  enters  girlhood ;  the  fresh  and  blooming 


420 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


girl  before  she  reaches  womanhood  is  like  a  half-opened 
flower,  drooping,  colorless,  and  wilted  on  its  stem ;  while 
the  once  healthy  and  happy  mother  affords  no  nourishment, 
or  only  sickly  nourishment  to  her  puny  offspring. 

Is  not  this  an  outrage  on  the  most  sacred  laws  of  nature  % 
on  what  the  moral  world  holds  to  be  most  dear  ? 

LOOK  ON  THIS  PICTURE. 

But  there  is  worse  than  this.  We  hold  up  as  a  mirror 
the  following  description  of  maidenhood  and  womanhood 
in  European  factories,  and  leave  it  to  our  experienced 
readers  to  say  if  the  features  seen  therein  are  those  of  any 
of  the  girls  or  women  employed  in  our  great  American  es¬ 
tablishments. 

BIRTH  OF  THE  FACTORY  GIRL. 

“  Moralists  show  us  the  factory  girl  born  amid  want  and 
corruption,  almost  entirely  separated  from  her  mother  by  the 
requirements  of  the  workshop,  forsaken  rather  than  reared 
in  one  of  those  wretched  burrows  which  are  the  only  home 
of  the  working-man,  and  in  which  the  only  examples  set  be¬ 
fore  her  childish  eyes  are  scenes  of  drunkenness  and  dissi¬ 
pation  :  these  examples  follow  her  first  footsteps  jts  she  be¬ 
gins  her  industrial  career,  while  still  a  child.  For  even  at 
that  tender  age  she  can  sift  the  coke  cinders  and  watch  a 
few  spindles,  or  perform  some  other  light  labor  not  above 
her  strength. 

HER  GIRLHOOD. 

“It  too  frequently  happens  that  by  applying  her  to  such 
untimely  and  barren  labors  as  these,  no  time  is  left  for  re¬ 
ligious  instruction,  for  attendance  at  school, — nay,  even  for 
the  outdoor  exercise  so  necessary  to  physical  development. 
Thus  the  child  grows  up  to  adult  age,  and  becomes  an  ap¬ 
prentice. 

“  At  this  critical  epoch  begin  for  factory  girls  the  terrible 


HER  MARRIED  LIFE. 


421 


trials  that  so  few  of  them  pass  through  victoriously.  Left 
alone  and  unprotected,  without  experience  or  instruction, 
in  the  midst  of  vast  and  crowded  workshops,  subjected  to 
daily  labor  lasting  eleven,  twelve,  or  thirteen  hours,  obliged 
to  be  at  work  before  dawn  and  to  leave  it  after  nightfall, 
obliged  also,  too  often,  to  work  side  by  side  with  men,  and 
almost  invariably  underpaid  for  their  labor, — these  poor 
girls  are  exposed  to  ever-present  temptations  and  allure¬ 
ments  to  sin. 

HER  MAIDENHOOD  AND  ITS  DANGERS. 

“  Should  it  happen  that  the  sexes  are  separated  in  the 
workshop  the  girls  are  still  under  the  direction  of  the  male 
superintendents,  who,  from  their  authority  and  influence, 
can  do  great  mischief.  In  fine,  during  the  long  working 
hours  in  the  unavoidable  half-intimacy  arising  from  prox¬ 
imity  in  the  same  occupation,  conversations  are  carried  on 
in  half- whispers,  and  very  unedifying  confidences  are  made 
by  one  girl  to  another,  which  open  up  to  an  innocent  soul 
an  evil  world  unsuspected  hitherto.  Then,  there  are  coarse 
jokes,  indelicate  allusions,  raillery  more  fatal  than  out¬ 
spoken  obscenity, — and,  above  all,  the  contagious  example 
of  their  associates, — all  combining  to  destroy  the  very  last 
remnants  of  native  modesty  preserved  beneath  the  paternal 
roof.  .  .  . 

HER  MARRIED  LIFE. 

“  The  industrial  labor  of  women, — and  this  is  its  most  se¬ 
rious  result, — tends  to  the  utter  destruction  of  the  working 
man’ s  family,  and  the  desertion  of  his  home.  Leaving  the 
house  before  sunrise  and  returning  to  it  after  dark,  and  tied 
down  to  her  post  in  the  workshop  during  the  daytime,  the 
working-woman  is  only  in  name  a  wife  and  a  mother  ;  she 
is  degraded  down  to  the  nature  of  a  factory  hand.  There 
are  no  more  meals  in  common,  at  least  during  the  day  ;  for 
she  has  no  time  to  prepare  them.  There  are  no  fireside  joys 


422 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


for  her :  how  can  she  tidy  and  brighten  things  in  her  poor 
little  home  when  she  comes  back  to  it  after  twelve  hours  of 
hard  labor,  harassed,  exhausted,  and  only  yearning  for  rest 
and  sleep  \  There  are  no  sweet  meetings  at  evening,  after 
the  day’s  toil,  between  husband,  wife,  and  children.  The 
husband  knows  that  he  will  find  no  fire  on  his  hearth,  no 
warm  food  to  cheer  him,  nothing  but  a  dirty  and  untidy 
room,  and  a  nervous  and  ill-tempered  woman.  So  he  will 
go,  like  his  mates,  to  the  tavern,  to  eat  and  drink  with  them 
there,  and  to  go  home  at  midnight,  if  he  goes  home  at  all. 

HEB  BAEEEN  AXD  DESOLATE  HOME  :  BABY-FABMIXG. 

‘  ‘  There  are  no  children  in  these  desolate  homes.  They  are 
a  nuisance  to  parents  who  have  to  work  all  day, — they  take 
up  too  much  time.  Scarcely  are  they  born,  when  they  are 
sent  to  nurse  in  some  of  these  well-known  6  baby-farms,’ 
wdiere  the  deaths  among  these  little  innocents  yearly  amount 
to  25,  30,  40,  50,  60,  and  70  per  cent.  .  .  .  All  are  thus 

deprived  of  this  tender  care  so  needed  by  infancy,  of  these 
first  teachings  given  by  a  mother  through  her  tears  or 
her  smiles  ;  they  lack  that  first  education  on  a  mother’s 
knees  ( V  education  des  langes ),  which  no  after-training  can 
supply.”  * 

This  then  is  the  plague-spot,  this  the  nature  of  the  pesti¬ 
lence.  Assuredly  there  is  any  thing  but  exaggeration  in 
this  statement.  There  are  manufacturers,  we  gladly  ac¬ 
knowledge  it,  in  our  great  industrial  districts,  who  are  care¬ 
ful  both  of  the  health  and  comfort,  and  of  the  morality  of 
their  working  men  and  women. 

AMEBIC ANS  SHOULD  BE  AX  AGTBICULTUBAL  AND  SEAFAEIXG 

PEOPLE. 

But  ours  is,  or  ought  to  be,  by  the  very  force  of  circum¬ 
stances  and  from  the  splendid  bounty  of  nature,  an  agricul¬ 
tural  and  pastoral  country, — a  country  of  prosperous  far- 


*  La  Question  du  Travail  des  Femmes  en  France  et  d  Vetranger. 


THE  NEW-ENGLAND  LOCUST  PLAGUE. 


423 


mers  and  hardy  seafaring  men.  Such  avocations  ought  to 
secure  the  republic,  for  ages  to  come,  happy,  peaceful,  vir¬ 
tuous  homes,  healthful  and  robust  parents,  with  a  robust 
and  healthful  and  numerous  progeny.  Our  industries,  if 
carried  on  extensively,  should  be  regulated  by  the  same 
wise  laws  and  the  same  spirit  which  prevail  in  the  cantons 
of  Switzerland. 

41 

SUCH  WAS  THE  IDEAL  OF  THE  PURITANS. 

As  things  are,  or  threaten  to  be  in  the  near  future,  the 
Eastern  States,  the  proud  cradle  of  American  freedom  and 
thrift,  are  threatened  with  the  total  and  speedy  extinction 
of  the  original  population  ;  and  that  which  will  fill  their 
places  for  a  brief  time  will  be  swept  away  in  their  turn  by 
the  pestilential  blight  which  is  now  on  the  homes  of  the 
Puritans. 

INDUSTRIAL  NEW  ENGLAND  REALIZING  THE  LOCUST  PLAGUE. 

Shall  we  point  in  vain  to  “the  plague  of  locusts,”  and 
the  pregnant  lessons  it  teaches  % 

“  The  swarm  to  which  Juba  pointed  grew  and  grew  till 
it  became  a  compact  body,  as  much  as  a  furlong  square ; 
yet  it  was  but  the  vanguard  of  a  series  of  similar  hosts, 
formed  one  after  another  out  of  the  hot  mold  or  sand,  ris¬ 
ing  into  the  air  like  clouds,  enlarging  into  a  dusky  canopy, 
and  then  discharged  against  the  fruitful  plain.  At  length 
the  huge  innumerous  mass  was  put  into  motion,  and  began 
its  career,  darkening  the  face  of  day.  ... 

“  Heavily  and  thickly  did  the  locusts  fall;  they  were 
lavish  of  their  lives  ;  they  choked  the  flame  and  the  water, 
which  destroyed  them  the  while,  and  the  vast  living  hostile 
armament  still  moved  on.  ... 

“  After  they  had  done  all  the  mischief  they  could  by 
their  living,  when  they  had  made  their  foul  maws  the  grave 
of  every  living  thing,  then  they  died  themselves  and  made 
the  desolated  land  their  own  grave.  They  took  from  it  its 


424 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


hundred  forms  and  varieties  of  beautiful  life,  and  left  it 
their  own  fetid  and  poisonous  carcases  in  payment.”  * 

Assuredly  the .  brave-hearted  men  and  women  who  first 
landed  in  Massachusetts  Bay,  and  who  reclaimed  from  the 
forest  and  the  inhospitable  climate  and  the  hostile  forest- 
tribes  the  rugged  soil  on  which  they  planted  their  own 
homesteads,  contemplated  the  creation  of  a  commonwealth 
and  a  race  devoted  principally  to  agriculture,  and  next  to 
seafaring.  It  never  entered  their  minds  that,  with  a  whole 
continent  as  their  birthright,  their  descendants  should  cramp 
their  souls,  stunt  their  bodies,  impoverish  their  blood,  and 
make  their  homes  barren  and  desolate,  by  turning  the  fair 
land  into  a  vast  workshop. 

THIS  EXTENSION  OF  INDUSTRY  A  BLUNDEB. 

Thank  God,  this  plague-spot,  which  is  a  political,  a  social, 
and  a  moral  blunder,  is  as  yet  confined  within  narrow  lim¬ 
its  ; — and  in  the  Middle  States,  in  the  South  and  the  grow¬ 
ing  West,  American  homes  are  still  sanctuaries  of  domestic 
virtue  and  happiness,  woman  is  not  degraded  to  a  something 
little  better  than  a  machine,  and  man  is  not  likely  to  become 
a  socialist,  “a  working-man  made  drunk  and  poisoned  with 
the  wine  of  communism  and  unbelief,”  and  becoming,  living 
and  dying,  like  the  locust  plague,  the  curse  and  blight  of  a 
continent  which  God  has  made  so  beautiful  and  so  wealthy. 

But,  impossible  as  it  is  to  reach  or  remedy  this  enormous 
evil  in  its  effects  on  family  life,  on  women,  and  young  girls, 
we  can,  at  least,  try  to  make  our  instructions  and  exhorta¬ 
tions  reach  the  homes  and  hearts  of  these  vast  armies  of 
poor  toilers, — noble  toilers,  so  many  of  them, — worthy  of 
all  the  sympathy  and  zeal  of  true-hearted  men  and  women 
throughout  the  country. 

KEMEDIAL  MEASURES  FROM  RELIGION. 

Can  we  wond.er  that  the  Church,  in  her  infinite  tenderness 
for  human  souls  tried  by  suffering  and  exposed  to  the  most 


*  Newman’s  “  Callista,”  cli.  xv. 


REMEDIAL  MEASURES  FROM  RELIGION. 


425 


terrible  temptations,  feels  so  anxious  to  multiply  her  orders 
and  communities  of  religious  women,  for  the  sole  purpose 
of  ministering  to  the  bodily  and  spiritual  wants  of  these 
hosts  of  their  needy  sisters  3  At  this  moment,  our  American 
women,  remembering  all  that  their  own  dear  ones  endured 
during  our  late  civil  war,  are  zealously  employed  in  organ¬ 
izing  relief  associations  for  the  sick  and  wounded  of  the  two 
great  armies  contending  on  the  battle-fields  of  Bulgaria  and 
Armenia.  That  is  laudable. 

But  let  our  charity,  0  American  women,  begin  at  home  ; 
and  let  us  turn  our  eyes  and  hearts  toward  the  bodily  suf¬ 
ferings,  the  heart-aches,  and  the  deep,  deep  misery  of  the 
five  or  six  hundred  thousand  women,  girls,  little  children, 
whose  lives  are  poisoned,  whose  bodies  and  souls  are  de¬ 
stroyed,  and  whose  homes  are  made  desolate  and  utterly 
ruined,  by  the  excessive  abuses  of  industry  ! 

HOW  THE  CHURCH  PROTECTED  WOMEN  TOILERS  IN  THE 

MIDDLE  AGES. 

We  have  related  above  how  the  Church,  in  the  ages  of 
faith,  freed  the  slave  and  the  serf  from  their  bondage ; 
we  might  have  told  how  she  protected  labor  and.  indus¬ 
try  of  every  description,  encouraging  both  the  freedmen 
farmers  in  the  country,  and  artisans  and  laborers  in  the 
towns,  to  form  associations  for  mutual  aid  and  defense. 
She  only  interposed  her  authority  to  prevent  such  associa¬ 
tions  or  guilds  from  becoming  oppressive  to  their  own 
members  or  aggressive  toward  others.  She  limited  her  care 
over  them  to  the  securing  of  obedience  of  the  laws  of  God 
and  the  State  by  every  one  of  their  members,  and  to  the 
practice  of  justice  and  brotherly  charity  toward  each  other. 
As  early  as  the  twelfth  century  the  industry  of  the  Low 
Countries  (comprising  the  present  kingdoms  of  Holland  and 
Belgium)  was  very  much  developed,  while,  on  account  of 
the  very  narrow  limits  of  arable  land,  agricultural  occupa¬ 
tions  were  confined  in  some  parts  to  comparatively  few. 
Hence  there  were  many  obstacles  toward  the  settlement  of 


426 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


poor  girls  or  obtaining  proper  employment  for  them,  and  a 
large  proportion  of  persons  of  the  sex  were  thns  forced  to 
live  in  celibacy  and  left  without  any  certain  means  of  sub¬ 
sistence. 

It  was  a  sad  state  of  things,  for  which  the  Church  alone, 
the  common  parent,  could  find  a  remedy.  Just  when  this 
multitude  of  homeless  and  unprotected  women  were  at  their 
worst,  God  sent  a  holy  priest  called  Lambert-le-Begue  (or 
Lambert  the  Stammerer),  who  united  these  poor  defense¬ 
less  girls  into  communities  half  monastic  and  half  indus¬ 
trial,  where,  living  under  a  rule  and  obeying  one  common 
superior  chosen  by  themselves,  all  could  unite  a  life  of  re¬ 
tirement  and  prayer  with  a  life  of  profitable  labor, — all  who 
chose  making  the  ordinary  vows  of  chastity  and  obedience 
during  the  time  they  chose  to  remain  within  the  protection 
of  the  community,  the  others  binding  themselves  to  observe 
the  rules  while  living  there.  Both  the  civil  and  the  eccle¬ 
siastical  authorities  united  to  secure  such  a  blessed  retreat 
from  danger  or  intrusion  of  any  kind  ;  and  thus  the  women 
toilers  who  swarmed  over  the  land  found  there  either  a 
sweet,  safe,  and  permanent  home,  if  they  chose  to  abide 
there  and  accept  the  light  yoke  of  the  rule,  or  they  found  a 
secure  and  blissful  home — as  compared  with  the  lot  of  their 
sisters  outside — while  they  labored  for  a  time  in  laying  up 
provision  for  the  future  and  practicing  all  the  virtues  they 
might  bring  with  their  savings  to  an  independent  home  of 
their  own. 

LAMBERT-LE-B&GUE  AND  HIS  LABOR  COMMUNITIES. 

From  the  holy  founder,  Lambert-le-Begue,  these  women 
were  called  by  the  people  Beguines, — a  name  which  the 
virtues  they  practiced  and  the  countless  services  they  ren¬ 
dered  to  the  public  caused  to  be  blessed  all  through  the 
land.  The  chief  cities  of  Holland  and  Belgium  were  but 
too  glad  to  favor  the  establishment  of  branch  communities, 
and  thus  down  to  the  present  day  the  dense  and  hard¬ 
working  population  of  the  Low  Countries  has  found  for  its 


ADVICE  TO  YOUNG  WOMEN  IN  FACTORIES.  42T 

women  toilers  a  most  blessed  refuge  and  protection  in  the 
creation  of  a  poor  priest. 

At  this  moment  the  city  of  Ghent  possesses  two  vast  Be- 
guinages,  both  founded  in  1234,  that  of  St.  Elizabeth,  con¬ 
taining  some  seven  hundred  inmates,  and  the  other  npward 
of  three  hundred.  These  resemble  little  towns  in  the  midst 
of  a  great  city,  each  being  an  aggregation  of  separate  houses 
or  convents  under  their  own  immediate  superiors.  They 
have  a  parish  church  of  their  own,  and  a  cemetery  ;  hospi¬ 
tals  and  infirmaries.  From  the  very  beginning  they  devoted 
themselves  to  sewing,  weaving,  embroidery,  lace- work,  and 
all  other  work  congenial  to  the  strength  and  habits  of  their 
sex.  Of  course  they  were  bitterly  assailed  from  age  to  age 
by  the  guilds  or  associations  of  weavers,  etc., — as  wTell  as 
by  some  of  the  religious  orders,  who  disliked  a  mode  of  life 
which  partook  both  of  monastic  discipline  and  secular  lib¬ 
erty.  Other  establishments,  founded  in  imitation  of  that 
of  Lambert-le-Begue,  while  copying  some  of  the  main  fea¬ 
tures  of  his  rule,  added  others  less  favorable  to  that  union 
of  religious  fervor  and  application  to  labor  which  was  his 
great  aim.  These  spurious  Beguines  fell  into  various  dis¬ 
orders,  became  infected  with  heretical  opinions,  and  threw 
great  discredit  on  the  name  throughout  Germany.  Never¬ 
theless,  the  original  establishments  maintained  their  hold 
on  the  public  esteem,  and  were  protected  by  bishops  and 
magistrates  against  foes  of  every  kind. 

And  so  the  industrial  centers  of  the  Middle  Ages  were 
preserved  from  the  double  plague-spot  of  physical  degen¬ 
eracy  and  immorality.  Surely,  in  our  own  dear  country, 
the  day  may  come  when  our  hard-worked  young  men  and 
women  will  be  shielded  in  like  manner  beneath  the  folds 
of  her  mantle,  who  is  alone  upon  earth  the  true  mother  of 
the  children  of  God. 

ADVICE  TO  YOUNG  WOMEN  IN  FACTOEIES. 

As  things  are  in  our  midst, — we  can  only  encourage,  in 
our  manufacturing  towns,  young  women  working  there,  far 


428 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


away  from  their  families,  to  be  most  careful  in  choosing 
both  their  boarding-houses  and  their  companions  outside  of 
labor  hours.  Would  to  God  there  existed  in  every  great 
industrial  center  some  religious  order  of  women  who  would 
provide  comfortable,  airy,  and  secure  homes  for  these  un¬ 
protected  girls,  and  take  a  motherly  interest  in  finding  them 
safe  companions,  rational  and  improving  amusements, — all 
the  means  of  sweet  rest  for  mind  and  heart  and  body  after 
their  long  hours  of  factory  work !  In  such  retreats,  where 
the  pure  and  pious  atmosphere  of  home  affection  would 
surround  them,  the  Sunday  would  be  truly  made  for  these 
weary  ones  a  day  of  spiritual  and  bodily  recreation, — heart 
and  limbs  would  recover  strength  enough  to  face  anew  the 
labor  and  trials  of  the  coming  week ;  and  from  amid  the 
fatigues  and  depression  of  the  week,  these  poor  young  toil¬ 
ers  could  look  forward  to  the  repose  of  Sunday,  and  to  the 
loving  care  of  holy  women  who  would  combine  for  them  the 
tenderness  of  a  mother  and  the  trustfulness  of  a  sister. 

IIOW  THEY  ARE  TO  REFRESH  HEART  AND  MIND. 

The  first  need  of  a  young  girl,  thrown  a  stranger  into  a 
large  workshop,  is  to  find  a  girl  of  her  own  age  on  whom 
she  can  lean,  and  to  whom  she  may  open  her  heart.  This  is 
an  imperious  necessity  ;  and  the  danger  is,  that,  in  yielding 
to  it,  an  untrustworthy  companion  may  be  chosen.  There 
are  many  ways  to  avoid  a  choice  so  disastrous  to  the  new¬ 
comer.  It  is  impossible  that  there  should  not  be  in  every 
large  workshop,  certainly  in  every  factory,  some  one  girl,  or 
several,  distinguished  for  goodness,  prudence,  and  charity. 
These  are  well  known  to  their  companions,  and  a  stranger 
anxious  to  find  out  one  such  who  may  be  a  guide  and  coun¬ 
selor  to  her,  has  only  to  look  about  her  at  first.  Her  own 
instincts,  if  she  be  truly  good  and  God-fearing,  will  soon 
direct  her  safely, — in  virtue  of  that  rule  by  which  like  soon 
discovers  like.  Besides,  if  God  places  on  your  path  a  true 
priest,  a  man  of  God,  who  knows  his  flock  well,  he  will 
easily  and  willingly  direct  you,  a  stranger,  and  desirous  of 


VALUE  OF  A  TRUE  FRIEND 


429 


saving  your  own  soul,  to  some  person  who  will  prove  a  true 
and  trusty  friend  to  you.  There  are,  too,  in  every  village 
and  town,  in  every  manufacturing  center,  several  families  at 
least,  whose  goodness  is  as  well  known  to  all  as  the  town- 
hall  or  the  parish  church.  Seek  an  acquaintance  with  these. 
If  you  be  what  we  have  supposed  you  to  be,  they  will  have 
no  hesitation  in  showing  you  kindness  and  hospitality  at 
lirst,  and  then,  when  they  know  you  better,  in  admitting 
you  to  their  intimacy.  It  will  be  a  priceless  blessing  for 
you  to  find  some  such  a  household  where  your  heart  can  be 
rested  and  refreshed  once  a  week  or  more,  by  breathing  the 
atmosphere  of  purity  and  peace  that  fills  it,  by  letting  the 
loving  kindness  of  true  hearts  flow  into  your  own  just  as 
the  silent  dew  or  the  soft,  warm  summer  rains  sink  into  the 
thirsty  and  parched  earth.  And  when  you  are  privileged 
to  be  received  into  such  a  household,  show  how  highly  you 
value  it  by  seeking  no  other  so  long  as  they  are  contented 
to  allow  you  to  fin<J  your  needed  rest  and  recreation  there. 
Let  your  respect,  your  gratitude  impel  you  to  be  more 
attentive,  more  kind,  more  devoted  daily  to  every  member 
of  the  family. 


VALUE  OF  A  TRUE  FRIEND. 

Should  you  not  find  a  family  of  this  description,  God  will 
send  you  a  true  friend, — and  be  both  thankful  and  devoted 
to  her.  Two  hearts  drawn  to  each  other  by  that  love  which 
has  God  for  its  principle,  will  find  a  thousand  ways  of  pleas¬ 
ing  each  other,  will  be  each  a  rest  to  the  other  from  care  and 
grief  and  discouragement.  Two  girls  truly  devoted  to  each 
other  will  not  fail  to  devise  from  week  to  week  new  methods 
of  recreation  and  amusement.  Their  good  share  of  woman’s 
wit  will  be  good  security  against  wearisomeness.  But  being, 
as  we  have  said,  God-fearing,  they  will  both  seek  together 
fn  their  exercises  of  piety  and  the  frequent  use  of  the  sacra¬ 
ments  the  surest  and  sweetest  heart-rest  within  reach  of  the 
lonely  and  the  toilworn. 

Yes, — for  every  one  of  you,  poor  children  of  toil,  no  mat- 


430 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


ter  on  what  part  of  the  busy,  noisy,  wearisome  factory- 
world  you  happen  to  read  this,  be  sure  that  there  is  no  re¬ 
freshment  so  great  and  strengthening  as  that  which  you  will 
get  in  the  heart  of  a  friend  full  of  God’s  love  and  grace, 
and  in  going  frequently  to  his  heart  who  is  your  ^Redeemer 
and  your  chiefest  rest  on  earth  and  in  heaven. 

READING  AND  MUSIC. 

But  the  mind  also  needs  repose  and  refreshment.  If  you 
have  neither  books  nor  other  safe  amusement,  try  to  have 
the  conversation  of  a  friend,  when  you  are  freed  from  toil, 
and  talk  of  pleasant  things,  forgetting  the  workshop,  with 
its  sights  and  sounds,  and  the  whole  world  of  labor  and 
wretchedness  connected  with  it.  If  there  are  libraries  from 
which  you  can  borrow,  then  try  to  have  some  work  that 
can  really  rest  your  mind, — that  can  take  you  away  into  a 
better  and  brighter  world  than  that  in  which  you  are  con¬ 
demned  to  toil  on  from  day  to  day.  If  possible,  read  this 
book  aloud  with  your  friend  ;  read  in  turns,  and  as  well  as 
you  can,  improving  yourselves  thereby.  Should  there  be 
singing  classes  anywhere  in  which  you  can  join,  and  should 
God  have  given  you  a  good  voice,  then  learn  to  sing,  and 
sing  with  your  whole  soul.  The  exercise  will  develop  your 
chest,  and  will  give  you  for  after-life  a  most  delightful 
means  of  recreation  for  yourself  and  others. 

Should  you  be  employed  on  factory  work  demanding 
education  and  a  certain  culture, — if  you  have  learned  instru¬ 
mental  and  vocal  music, — then  indeed  will  it  be  your  own 
fault  if  your  leisure  hours  do  not  afford  you  recreation  that 
will  be  truly  refreshing  and  elevating  as  well.  Cultivate 
most  assiduously  both  of  these  accomplishments,  and  make 
them  useful  in  lightening  the  burden  and  refining  the  life  of 
those  of  your  sister-laborers  who  are  less  fortunate  than 
yourself. 

BEWARE  OF  EXTRAVAGANCE  IN  DRESS. 

The  temptation  to  dress  as  well  as  the  best,  and  then  to 
outshine  the  most  dressy,  is  one  to  which  many  girls  weakly 


BE  PURE-HEARTED  AXD  BRAVE-HEARTED. 


431 


yield.  They  forget  that  this  temptation  leads  to  others  far 
more  fatal, — to  the  love  of  admiration,  and  to  the  road  to 
ruin.  Dress  neatly  always,  never  showily  ;  and  never  be 
tempted  to  dress  beyond  your  means,  or  even  to  go  in  dress 
to  the  full  limit  of  your  means.  Neither  men  of  sense  nor 
women  of  sense  admire  showy  girls ;  because  they  are  not 
girls  of  well-balanced  minds,  or,  but  too  frequently,  of  trust¬ 
worthy  virtue.  Be  anxious  to  cultivate  both  your  mind 
and  your  heart :  store  the  one  with  useful  knowledge  and 
the  other  with  the  fear  and  love  of  God.  Showy  hats  and 
fine  feathers  often  cover  brains  little  better  than  a  pea¬ 
cock'  s  ;  and  a  showy  silk  dress  is  but  a  sorry  covering  for 
a  fickle  heart  or  a  shaky  reputation. 

BE  SAVING  OF  TOUE  WAGES. 

No  matter  how  scanty  they  may  be,  put  by  a  part,  though 
never  so  small,  every  week.  Your  generosity,  while  toiling 
so  hard  and  rewarded  so  poorly,  must  be  in  denying  your¬ 
self  a  good  many  little  things  which,  if  indulged  in,  would 
not  add  much  to  your  happiness,  and  would  take  far  too 
much  from  your  little  purse.  Give  moderately  to  such 
charities  as  deserve  your  support :  it  is  not  expected  of  you 
that  you  can  have  much  to  give.  And  piety  does  not  de¬ 
mand  that  you  should  leave  yourself  unprovided  against 
the  day  of  need. 

BE  PCEE-IIEAKTED  AND  BEAVE-HEAETED. 

You  will  find  among  your  companions  many  who  have 
never  stained  by  deliberate  venial  sin  their  baptismal  robe 
of  innocence.  If  God  has  so  shielded  your  soul,  that  you 
are  thus  privileged,  then  no  words  we  could  address  to  you 
could  convey  suitably  our  sense  of  the  divine  mercy  in  your 
behalf.  You  have  read  in  the  Old  Testament  liistorv  of  the 
three  Hebrew  children  cast  into  the  flaming  furnace  by 
order  of  the  impious  Babylonian  king.  God’s  angel  was 
with  them  in  the  flame,  preventing  it  from  harming  them, 


432 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


while  they  sang  a  hymn  of  triumph  to  the  glory  of  their 
Almighty  benefactor. 

You  know  that  your  soul  is  as  dear  to  the  God  who 
created  and  redeemed  it  as  these  souls  were  to  him  before 
he  became  incarnate.  You  also  know  that  his  angel  is  ever 
with  you,  to  save,  befriend,  and  protect  you  in  every  dan¬ 
ger.  It  depends  on  you  alone  to  put  away  that  friendship 
and  protection  from  you, — or  to  secure  it  more  and  more 
by  your  humility  and  fidelity. 

WATCHFULNESS  OVEK  ONE’S  OUTWAED  SENSES. 

You  must, — in  the  trials  to  which  you  are  exposed,  and 
which  are  as  terrible  as  the  ordeal  of  the  flaming  furnace, — 
have  eyes  and  not  see,  ears  and  not  hear,  hands  which  never 
touch  any  thing  that  can  defile.  Never  open  your  soul  to 
any  affection,  never  accept  or  give  love,  that  you  do  not  feel 
sure  is  blessed  of  God. 

Do  you  wonder  how  God  can  preserve  a  soul  stainless, 
sinless,  holy  and  pure  in  his  sight,  in  the  midst  of  associa¬ 
tions  which  tend  continually  to  soil  and  pollute?  Then 
listen,  and  judge  for  yourself,  and  learn  to  trust  your  heart 
to  His  keeping  who  made  it. 

IIOW  GOD  CAN  KEEP  A  IIEAET  PUKE  AMID  COKKUPTION. 

Travelers  in  the  West  India  Islands,  or  among  the  vast 
forests  of  the  adjoining  continent,  find  swamps  covering 
immense  tracts  of  country,  all  covered  with  water  made 
nauseous  and  poisonous  by  all  kinds  of  decaying  vegeta¬ 
ble  and  animal  matter.  There  are  no  springs,  not  one  drop 
of  wholesome  water  to  be  found  for  those  who  journey 
through  these  trackless  wastes,  with  the  terrible  sun  of  the 
equator  raging  over  their  heads.  But  God  has  made  a  pro¬ 
vision, — a  most  marvelous  one,  for  the  need  even  of  the  poor 
idolatrous  Indian  wandering  there.  The  Indian  guide  will, 
when  the  traveler’s  thirst  is  most  intolerable,  lead  him  up 
to  a  gigantic  tree  all  covered  with  the  serpent-like  forms 
of  vines, — and  with  two  blows  of  his  light  hatchet  the 
savage  will  separate  a  length  of  two  or  three  feet  of  a  par- 


WELL  KEPT  IS  WHAT  GOD  KEEPETII. 


433 


ticular  vine,  first  above  and  then  beneath,  stopping  np  with 
his  hand  the  lower  orifice,  and  bidding  his  civilized  com¬ 
panion  drink.  The  latter  will  find  the  piece  of  vine  thus 
cut  suddenly  off,  to  be  filled  with  a  water  most  pure  and 
delicious  to  the  taste,  and  which  in  that  extraordinary  cli¬ 
mate  is  pumped  up  from  the  swampy  soil  to  the  extremi¬ 
ties  of  that  vine  far  above  in  the  sunlight. 

Will  you  ask  by  what  process  nature  enables  the  roots 
of  that  vine  to  filter  the  impure  and  poisonous  water  all 
around,  separating  and  rejecting  every  thing  that  is  unclean 
and  unwholesome,  and  sending  up  the  water  thus  purified 
to  refresh  and  to  feed  the  wild  vines  of  the  forest  ?  * 

God  has  never  yet  revealed  to  mortal  man  the  secret  of 
how  life  begins  or  is  carried  on  in  any  one  living  thing,  ani¬ 
mal  or  vegetable.  But  to  preserve  your  soul  sinless,  to 
watch  over  the  source  of  life  in  your  heart,  is  infinitely 
more  of  a  care  to  your  Heavenly  Father  than  to  send  the 
life-current  of  sap — pure,  cool,  refreshing  and  vivifying — • 
through  the  wild  vine  of  the  forest  or  the  lordly  tree  that 
supports  it. 

‘  “well  kept  is  what  god  keepeth.” 

Put  your  heart  in  His  hand  ; — “well  kept  is  what  God 
keepeth  ;  ’ 5  — and  be  brave-hearted.  Ho  not  be  cast  down,  be- 

*  In  Kingsley’s  “At  Last  :  A  Christmas  in  the  West  Indies,” — we  find  the 
following  passage:  “  In  one  of  these  palm-groves  we  landed,  for  we  were  right 
thirsty and  to  drink  lagoon-water  would  he  to  drink  cholera  or  fever.  But 
there  was  plenty  of  the  pure  water  in  the  coco-trees,  and  we  soon  had  our  fill. 
A  negro  walked — not  climbed — up  a  stem  like  a  four-footed  animal,  his  legs 
and  arms  straight,  his  feet  pressed  flat  against  it,  his  hand  clinging  round  it — 
a  feat  impossible,  as  far  as  I  have  seen,  to  an  European — tossed  us  down  plenty 
of  green  nuts  ;  and  our  feast  began.  Two  or  three  blows  with  the  cutlass,  at 
the  small  end  of  the  nut,  cut  off  not  only  the  pith-coat,  but  the  point  of  the 
shell,  and  disclose — the  nut  being  held  carefully  upright  meanwhile — a  cavity 
full  of  perfectly  clear  water,  slightly  sweet,  and  so  cold  (the  pitli-coat  being  a 
good  non-conductor  of  heat)  that  you  are  advised,  for  fear  of  cholera,  to  flavor  it 
with  a  little  brandy.  After  draining  this  natural  cup,  you  are  presented  with  a 
natural  spoon  of  rind,  green  outside  and  white  within,  and  told  to  scoop  out 
and  eat  the  cream  which  lines  the  inside  of  the  shell,  a  very  delicious  food  in  the 
opinion  of  Creoles.” — Ch.  xiii.,  pp.  330,  337.  See,  also,  Ibidem ,  p.  159. 

28 


434 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


cause  God  is  with  you, — his  child,  and  most  dear  to  his  heart. 
Accept  your  toil,  every  day  that  rises,  in  memory  of  him 
who  toiled  for  you  in  the  carpenter’ s  shop ;  and  when  you 
stand  in  the  midst  of  your  companions,  and  the  mighty  ma¬ 
chinery  around  you  has  begun  to  work  and  to  clatter,  love  to 
remember  that  “  the  carpenter’s  Son,”  whose  hand  rules  the 
motions  of  this  vast  and  wondrous  universe,  is  near  you, 
that  his  love  and  protection  surrounds  like  an  atmosphere 
of  peace  and  light.  Lift  your  heart  to  him  oftentimes 
through  the  day, — when  you  are  weariest  and  faintest, — and 
think  how  your  moments  and  heart-throbs  are  counted  by 
him  ! 

So  will  the  pure  heart  be  the  brave  heart.  And,  thinking 
thus  of  him  who  counts  your  weary  weeks  and  days,  and 
keeps  in  store  for  you  the  repose  and  refreshment  of  the 
eternal  years, — you  can  comfort  yourself  also  with  such 
thoughts  as  the  following  : 

WOEK. 

Wliat  are  we  set  on  earth  for  ?  Say,  to  toil — 

Nor  seek  to  leave  thy  tending  of  the  vines. 

For  all  the  heat  o’  the  day,  till  it  declines 
And  death’s  mild  cnrfew  shall  from  work  assoil. 

God  did  anoint  thee  with  his  odorous  oil, 

To  wrestle,  not  to  reign  ;  and  he  assigns 
All  thy  tears  over,  like  pure  crystallines. 

For  younger  fellow- workers  of  the  soil 
To  wear  for  amulets.  So  others  shall 
Take  patience,  labor,  to  their  heart  and  hand 
From  thy  hand,  and  thy  heart,  and  thy  brave  cheer. 

And  God’s  grace  fructify  through  thee  to  all. 

The  least  flower,  with  a  brimming  cup,  may  stand 
And  share  its  dew-drop  with  another  near. 


% 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

SEBVANTS  IN'  THE  HOME. 

Exhort  servants  to  be  obedient  to  their  masters,  in  all  things  pleasing,  not 
contradicting,  not  defrauding  ;  but  in  all  things  showing  good  fidelity  :  that 
they  may  adorn  the  doctrine  of  God  our  Saviour  in  all  things. — St.  Paul, 
Epistle  to  Titus,  ii.  9,  10. 

Servants,  be  subject  to  your  masters.  .  .  .  Not  only  to  the  good  and 

gentle,  but  also  to  the  froward.  For  this  is  thankworthy,  if,  for  conscience 
towards  God,  a  man  endure  sorrows,  suffering  wrongfully.  For  what  glory  is 
it,  if  sinning  and  being  buffeted,  you  suffer  it?  But  if  doing  well,  you  suffer 
patiently,  this  is  thankworthy  before  God.  For  unto  this  you  have  been  called  ; 
because  Christ  also  suffered  for  us,  leaving  you  an  example,  that  you  should 
follow  in  his  steps. — 1  St.  Peter,  ii.  18-21. 

No  servant  is  truly  devout  who  is  not  laborious  ;  a  lazy  piety  in  persons  of 
their  condition  is  a  false  piety. — St.  Zita. 

What  instruction  and  encouragement  must  not  servants  themselves  have 
received  from  reading  the  words  inscribed  over  the  chapel  in  Rome  (dedicated  to 
St.  Zita),  Felixque  potuit  duobus  dominis  divino  humanoque  fideliter  inservire.  * 


THE  PATRON  SAINT  OF  MAID-SERVANTS. 

To  very  many  of  the  readers  of  this  book  the  mountainous 
and  lovely  region  which  gave  birth  to  St.  Zita, — a  servant- 
maid  from  her  twelfth  to  her  sixtieth  year, — will  have  a  spe¬ 
cial  interest  in  that  it  was  the  scene  of  the  apostolic  labors  of 
one  of  St.  Patrick’s  most  glorious  disciples.  For  to  Lucca, 


*  “And  happily  could  serve  two  masters — a  divine  and  a  human — with  faith¬ 
fulness.” — Digby,  Compitum. 


435 


436 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


about  the  year  of  grace  550,  came  St.  Frediano  (Frigidianus), 
a  native  of  Ireland,  who  revived  religion  and  piety  in  that 
part  of  ancient  Etruria  watered  by  the  rapid  and  turbu- 
•  lent  Serchio.  His  eminent  virtues  caused  him  to  be  chosen , 
bishop  of  Lucca  in  560,  and  he  governed  its  see  till  his  death 
in  580.  No  city  in  northern  or  central  Italy  is  more  deserv¬ 
ing  of  a  visit  from  the  traveler, — the  traveler,  especially, 
who  is  seeking  for  health, — than  this  beautiful  city,  4  4  Lucca 
the  Thrifty,”  situated  in  a  plain  which  seems  a  paradise  in 
the  lovely  springtide  and  early  summer,  with  its  silk  facto¬ 
ries  dating  from  the  age  of  Dante  and  its  woolen  industries 
of  still  more  remote  origin.  It  was  a  liberty-loving  country 
also ;  for  Lucca  was,  it  is  thought,  one  of  the  cities  which 
formed  the  ancient  Etrurian  confederacy,  and  for  three  hun¬ 
dred  years  (1055-1342)  maintained  its  independence  as  a 
Christian  republic. 

One  stupendous  miracle  is  recorded  of  its  Irish  apostle- 
bishop.  The  terrible  Serchio  annually  Hooded  the  fertile 
surrounding  plain,  and  not  unfrequently  devastated  it.  But 
the  holy  bishop,  acting  under  an  inspiration  from  on  high, 
sallied  forth  one  day  when  the  waters  were  rising  and 
spreading  desolation  on  every  side,  and  while  his  people 
were  praying  to  heaven  for  relief, — and  seizing  a  plow¬ 
share,  he  traced  a  new  course  for  the  devastating  river. 
Into  this  channel  the  obedient  waters  rushed,  and  through 
it  they  have  flowed  ever  since  !  In  the  next  century  two 
of  the  Lombard  kings,  Bertharic  and  Cunibert,  erected  a 
splendid  basilica  over  the  tomb  of  this  great  public  benefac¬ 
tor, — and  within  that  beautiful  and  venerable  church  is  the 
tomb  of  her  whom  the  gratitude  of  six  hundred  years  has 
loved  to  call  the  patron  saint, — the  model  and  protectress  ' 
of  servants, — St.  Zita. 

WHAT  A  COUNTRY  GIRL  COULD  DO. 

Look  we  one  moment  into  the  mirror  of  her  heroic  life. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  a  peasant  family  living  in  the 
mountains  some  eight  miles  from  Lucca, — a  family,  what- 


A  SERVANT  IN  HER  TWELFTH  YEAR. 


437 


ever  may  have  been  its  poverty  in  worldly  goods,  most  rich, 
in  those  of  Christian  virtue  ;  for  one  of  her  uncies  died  in 
odor  of  sanctity  in  his  hermitage  on  Mount  Lupelia,  among 
the  Apuan  Alps,  and  one  of  her  sisters,  Margarita,  lived 
and  died  a  saint  in  a  Cistercian  convent. 

A  SERVANT  IN  HER  TWELFTH  YEAR. 

*  r 

When  Zita  was  in  her  twelfth  year  she  accompanied  her 
father  to  market,  taking  with  her  a  basket  of  beautiful 
flowers,  an  offering,  it  may  be,  for  the  shrine  of  St.  Frediano, 
which  was  the  loved  resort  of  pilgrims  from  all  the  country 
far  and  near.  At  any  rate  the  father  and  his  child  were 
met  by  a  nobleman  of  the  name  of  Fatinelli,  whose  dwell¬ 
ing  was  next  to  the  basilica,  and  with  him  the  little  maid 
was  left  as  a  servant  by  her  parent.  This  happened  in  1224. 
From  that  day  till  her  death,  on  the  27th  of  April,  1272, 
Zita  lived  in  that  household,  near  the  shrine  of  her  revered 
St.  Frediano,  fulfilling,  as  the  years  went  by,  all  the  offices 
of  a  faithful  and  most  pious  servant,  and  embalming  the 
whole  of  Etruria,  the  whole  of  Italy,  with  the  sweet  odor 
of  her  angelic  virtues  and  heroic  charities. 

Her  noble  master,  who  little  knew  how  much  the  fame  of 
his  own  house  was  to  depend  on  the  sanctity  of  that  lowly 
maiden,  spared  her  neither  hard  labor  nor  harsh,  treatment. 
But  his  children  testified,  long  after  he  had  passed  away, 
that  unkind  words  and  harsh  deeds  never  called  forth  from 
the  much-enduring  maiden  a  word  of  remonstrance  or  a 
sign  of  anger  or  impatience. 

She  grew  up  to  be  a  most  beautiful  girl,  simple  and  sweet, 
like  the  bright,  fragrant  flowers  that  cover  the  hillsides  and 
deep  secluded  valleys  of  her  own  native  Alps.  She  had 
many  suitors,  but  had  early  given  her  whole  heart  to  the 
Crucified,  and  had  to  bear  many  a  rude  ^  assault  to  preserve 
her  treasure  amid  the  lawless  and  armed  violence  of  that 
troublous  period.  But  more  than  once,  in  defense  of  it,  her 
wonted  lamblike  meekness  was  changed  into  the  courage 
and  strength  of  the  lion. 


438 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


WHERE  ZITA  FOUND  HER  STRENGTH. 

\ 

She  drew  this  superhuman  strength  and  all  her  other 
qualities  from  constant  communion  with  the  divine  majesty 
in  prayer,  and  that  absorbing  love  of  the  hidden  God,  which 
would  keep  her  soul  entranced  for  hours,  like  that  of  Mon¬ 
ica,  near  the  mercy-seat.  Nor  did  she  employ  the  time  set 
apart  for  her  household  work  in  these  exercises  of  private 
devotion.  Never  was  she  known  to  leave  any  part  of  her 
domestic  service  unfulfilled  ;  for  she  knew  well  that  in  serv¬ 
ing  her  earthly  masters  with  upright  heart  and  scrupulous 
fidelity,  she  was  doing  His  will  to  whom  alone  all  right  ser¬ 
vice  is  paid,  and  from  whom  all  duty  well  performed  has  its 
assured  reward. 

In  those  ages,  in  free  Lucca  especially, — all  classes,  mas¬ 
ters  and  servants  alike,  deemed  it  an  indispensable  act  of 
piety  to  assist  at  the  morning  sacrifice,  and  much  latitude 
was  allowed,  even  in  so  industrious  a  beehive  as  Lucca, 
amid  her  teeming  plain  and  flowering  Alps, — to  attend  even¬ 
ing  song.  The  practice  of  “  Perpetual  Praise,”  which  St. 
Columbanus  had  brought  from  Ireland  to  Gaul,  and  from 
Gaul  to  the  wild  tracts  around  Lake  Constance,  he  also  es¬ 
tablished  in  Bobbio,  where  he  died  at  the  northern  extremity 
of  that  same  mountain  range  which  Frediano  had  evangel¬ 
ized  before  him.  And  this  heavenly  practice  of  sending  up 
at  every  hour  of  the  night  and  day  the  sound  of  adoration 
and  thanksgiving,  was  kept  up  by  the  great  Benedictine 
family  who  supplanted  the  disciples  of  Columbanus,  and  by 
the  Dominicans  and  Franciscans,  who  arose  side  by  side 
with  the  Benedictines.  The  churches  of  Lucca  thus  re¬ 
sounded  day  and  night  with  the  voice  of  sacred  song,  and 
all  laymen  who  were  at  leisure  to  do  so  loved  to  join  in  the 
psalmody.  Zita,  when  her  day’s  toil  was  over,  found  her 
delight  in  joining  the  worshipers  in  St.  Frediano.  She 
habitually  rose  at  midnight  and  sang  matins  and  lauds 
with  the  monks,  or  meditated  and  prayed  before  some  favor¬ 
ite  altar,  or  hidden  in  the  gloom  of  some  remote  corner. 


ZITA'S  UNBOUNDED  CHARITY. 


439 


Nor  did  these  vigils  affect  her  health  or  impair  her 
strength  for  the  labors  of  the  ensuing  day.  No  strength 
is  equal  to  such  toil  as  that  of  a  soul  tired  with  the  love  of 
God  and  the  neighbor.  Zita  came  always  away  from  the 
divine  presence  tilled  with  a  deeper  reverence  for  her  mas¬ 
ters  and  a  practical  humility  which  showed  itself  in  her 
unalterable  patience  and  gentle  bearing  under  ill  treatment. 
It  mattered  little  to  her  that  they  were  in  the  wrong  and  she 
in  the  right : — whenever  she  saw  them  angry  with  herself  or 
others,  if  meek  and  humble  words  did  not  suffice  to  turn 
away  their  wrath,  she  would  ask  forgiveness  on  bended 
knees. 

This  sweetness  of  disposition,  this  humility  which  was 
proof  against  the  most  unjust  and  degrading  treatment,  and 
which  avoided  praise  or  flattery  as  one  would  fly  from  the 
breath  of  the  plague,  produced  a  deep  impression  on  the 
Fatinelli  family,  and  inspired  them  at  length  with  sincere 
veneration  for  this  angel  of  their  household. 

zita’s  unbounded  chaeity. 

An  angel  she  assuredly  was  to  all  who  were  in  need  of 
bodily  or  spiritual  assistance,  this  little  serving-maid  of  the 
Fatinelli.  The  poor  throughout  the  city  and  from  the  sur¬ 
rounding  district  soon  learned  to  come  to  her,  and  where 
she  found  means  to  relieve  their  wants  was  the  secret  of 
him  who  blessed  the  charitable  widow’s  cruse  of  oil  and 
pot  of  meal.  Her  slender  wages  were  all  given  to  the  needy, 
and  so  was  every  thing  which  the  generosity  of  others  be¬ 
stowed  on  her.  Besides,  the  sweet  odor  of  sanctity  cannot 
be  concealed  amid  the  obscurity  in  which  God’s  humble 
servants  hide  themselves  and  their  deeds,  any  more  than  the 
fragrance  of  the  night-flowering  cereus  can  be  rendered  in¬ 
sensible  by  the  deepest  darkness. 

It  took  not  very  many  years  for  the  faithful  citizens  of 
Lucca  to  discover  and  appreciate  the  rare  flower  of  holiness 
that  bloomed  beneath  the  shadow  of  San  Frediano  and  at  the 
very  foot  of  their  apostle’s  tomb.  So,  they  were  fain  to 


440 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


make  the  little  maid  their  almoner, — feeling  that  a  special 
blessing  went  with  whatever  was  given  by  her  hand, — and 
they  were  fain  as  well  to  beg  of  her  in  return  the  precious 
alms  of  her  prayers. 

It  was  affirmed  by  those  who  watched  her  closely  and 
were  in  the  secret  of  her  good  works,  that  God  wrought 
many  miracles  through  his  lowly  servant, — miracles  which 
tended,  every  one  of  them,  to  cure  or  relieve  the  soul  much 
more  than  the  body. 

HER  CHARITY  WORKS  A  MIRACLE. 

One  day  a  pilgrim  from  among  the  crowds  who  continually 
flocked  to  the  shrine  of  San  Frediano,  came  for  food  and 
drink  to  the  hospitable  gate  of  the  Fatinelli.  It  was  in 
midsummer,  and  the  poor  man  was  faint  with  fasting  and 
travel  and  the  oppressive  heat  of  the  weather.  But  Zita 
had  dispensed  her  store  to  the  last  morsel  of  bread  and 
meat,  and  the  last  cupful  of  the  native  wine  dealt  out  to 
wayfarers.  In  her  unavailing  compassion  she  was  about  to 
send  him  away,  when,  struck  with  a  sudden  inspiration,  she 
asked  him  to  wait,  ran  ofl  for  a  vessel  full  of  fresh  water, 
and,  making  the  sign  of  the  cross  over  it,  she  bade  him 
drink  in  God’s  name.  The  poor  famished  man  tasted  it, 
and  drank  a  long,  deep  draught :  the  vessel  was  full,  he 
said,  of  the  most  delicious  wine  he  had  ever  tasted  ! 

In  the  house  she  put  away  for  the  poor  almost  every  thing 
given  to  herself  for  food  ;  nay, — more  than  that, — she  never 
slept  in  the  neat  and  comfortable  bed  assigned  to  her, — but 
always  managed  to  have  it  daintily  prepared  for  the  neediest 
of  the  poor  or  the  sick  who  applied  to  her. 

HER  CHARITY  TOWARD  SOULS. 

Her  charity  toward  the  needy  soul,  however,  far  surpassed 
her  care  for  the  famished  and  the  sick.  It  was  then  the  cus¬ 
tom, — one  which  has  only  been  done  away  with  by  the  im¬ 
pious  revolutionary  crew  now  controlling  the  government 


THE  SERVANT-MAID  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  FAMILY.  441 

of  Italy, — that  whenever  a  culprit  was  condemned  to  death, 
the  bells  of  all  the  churches  rang  to  invite  the  entire  popu¬ 
lation  to  beseech  the  divine  goodness  in  behalf  of  the  sinful 
soul.  Zita,  on  such  occasions,  not  satisfied  with  praying 
with  the  entire  household,  would  spend  whole  nights  in 
prayer,  pleading  with  tears  and  pitiful  moans  for  that 
obdurate  soul. 

And  so,  year  after  year,  from  childhood  almost  to  her 
lovely  womanhood,  and  to  the  most  beautiful  maturity  of 
old  age,  did  that  glorious  life  of  self-denial  and  devotion  to 
the  welfare  of  others  unfold  itself.  Long  before  her  bodily 
strength  began  to  wane,  her  noble  masters,  who  had  learned 
to  prize  their  pearl  of  inestimable  worth,  would  have  her 
cease  from  her  labors  in  their  service.  They  begged  her  to 
consider  herself  a  member  of  the  family,  and  made  ample 
provision  for  her  support.  But,  as  our  readers  may  well 
imagine,  Zita  held  her  service,  her  dependence,  and  poverty 
of  too  high  a  value  before  God,  to  accept  these  honorable 
conditions.  Not  for  one  day  or  hour  did  she  cease  to  dis¬ 
charge,  so  far  as  she  was  permitted,  all  the  offices  she  had 
so  long  performed  so  lovingly,  so  dutifully.  No  increase  of 
age  or  infirmity  could  ever  induce  her  to  abate  her  labors  in 
favor  of  the  poor  and  the  sick,  to  relax  her  austerities,  or  to 
abridge  her  long  hours  of  ecstatic  prayer. 

THE  SERVAXT-MAID  THE  GLORY  OF  HER  MASTER’S  FAMILY. 

The  house  in  which  she  lived  became  almost  a  place  of 
pilgrimage,  during  her  lifetime  ;  for  prelates,  princes,  the 
illustrious  and  the  learned,  as  well  as  the  poor  and  afflicted, 
wished  to  look  upon  those  angelic  features  all  radiant  like 
the  face  of  Moses,  with  the  light  caught  from  long  inter¬ 
course  with  the  living  God, — all  were  fain  to  hear  sweet 
,  words  of  comfort  or  encouragement  from  that  venerable  wo- 
man,  who  had  spent  half  a  century  in  doing  the  work  of  a 
servant-maid  ; — princes  and  princesses,  the  highest  and  the 
best  in  the  land,  esteemed  it  a  blessing  to  touch  the  hem  of 


442 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


her  garment ;  and  the  poor  and  sick  would  kiss  her  very 
footprints  on  the  street. 

The  public  voice  affirmed  that  on  that  night  of  April  the 
27th,  1272, — when  Zita’s  pure  spirit  quitted  its  earthly  ten¬ 
ement,  a  star  of  surpassing  brightness  shone  in  the  firma- 
nent  above  Lucca.  The  children,  who  worshiped  her,  as 
if  by  a  common  impulse,  ran  together  toward  San  Frediano 
exclaiming :  “  Come,  come,  let  us  go  to  the  basilica, — for  Zita, 
the  saint,  is  dead  !  ”  It  was  a  wonderful  event,  and  a  most 
thrilling  spectacle  that  which  the  glorious  republic  beheld 
during  that  night  and  the  following  days  :  the  whole  of  cen¬ 
tral  Italy  seemed  to  be  drawn  as  by  some  mighty  magnetic 
force  toward  the  spot  on  which  lay.  exposed  those  venerable 
remains, — the  virginal  body  of  that  lowly-born  mountain 
maid, — one  of  the  holiest  and  noblest  of  Italy’s  many  noble 
and  holy  daughters ! 

ST.  ZITA  STILL  THE  PROTECTRESS  OF  HER  PEOPLE. 

No  one  will  marvel  that  her  native  republic  should  have 
chosen  St.  Zita  for  special  protectress  ;  nor  has  the  venera¬ 
tion  which  her  name  inspires,  nor  the  faith  in  her  unfailing 
interest  in  the  welfare  of  her  people  been  weakened  either 
by  the  lapse  of  time  or  the  sad  changes  which  political 
passions  and  revolutionary  impiety  have  made  in  manners 
and  institutions  and  the  very  face  of  all  things.  The  new 
Italian  government  has  discrowned  the  beautiful  city,  swept 
away  from  her  circle  of  lofty  walls  and  ramparts  the  shady 
avenues  of  grand  trees,  which  attracted  and  delighted  na¬ 
tives  and  foreigners  alike  ;  the  voice  of  “  Perpetual  Praise” 
has  long  ceased  to  resound  over  the  ymters  of  the  Serchio, 
and  church  after  church  has  been  blotted  out  with  the  old 
convents  and  monasteries.  But  they  have  not,  as  yet, 
dared  to  touch  the  venerable  Basilica  of  San  Frediano, — not 
through  respect  for  the  memory  or  the  work  of  the  an¬ 
cient  Lombard  kings,  or  through  reverence  for  the  Irish 
apostle  of  the  Lucchese,  but  through  a  temporary  deference 
to  the  popular  will ; — for  the  people  still  cling  fondly  to  all 


ST.  MARGARET  OF  LOUVAIN. 


443 


that  is  connected  with  the  name  of  their  sainted  benefac¬ 
tress.  And  so,  even  under  Piedmontese  rule,  Lucca,  each 
year,  on  the  27th  of  April,  just  when  the  spring  has  filled 
the  land  with  beauty,  fragrance,  and  song,  renews  the  mem¬ 
ory  of  her  proud  days  of  independence, — of  the  united 
reign  of  liberty  and  piety, — by  celebrating  with  heartfelt 
enthusiasm  the  feast  of  her  most  glorious  daughter. 

ST.  MARGARET  OF  LOUVAIN — A  SERVANT  IN  A  TAVERN. 

A  contemporary  of  St.  Zita’ s  was  St.  Margaret  of  Louvain, 
who  lived  and  died  a  servant  in  a  tavern.  Do  not  weary  if 
our  Mirror  should  afford  you  a  brief  glimpse  at  one  whom 
the  Church  reveres  and  glorifies  as  a  virgin  and  martyr. 

Perhaps  some  of  our  readers  will  exclaim,  “  What !  a  saint 
in  a  tavern  \  ’  ’  Ay,  truly,  a  saintly  servant-maid  leading  a 
life  of  supernatural  virtue  in  a  tavern,  and  not  only  that, 
but  a  tavern  which  its  master  and  mistress  made  the  abode  of 
the  most  devoted  Christian  hospitality,  as  well  as  the  home 
sanctuary  of  every  virtue  which  true  servants  of  God  could 
practice.  It  is  a  wonderful  lesson,  but  a  most  pregnant  one. 
So,  we  pray  you,  bestow  a  very  attentive  look  on  these  three 
saintly  Belgian  personages  in  yonder  tavern  at  Louvain. 

Remember,  dear  reader,  that  when  we  speak  of  taverns 
we  mean  those  of  the  thirteenth  century — of  the  year  1275, 
—not  of  those  of  the  nineteenth,  — in  the  year  1878.  The 
thirteenth  century  was  the  age  of  St.  Dominic  and  St. 
Francis,  of  St.  Louis,  King  of  France,  and  of  St.  Ferdi¬ 
nand,  King  of  Castile  ;  and  the  nineteenth  century  is  the 
age  of  democratic  triumphs  and  humanitarian  creeds,  of 
godless  empires  and  the  most  abject  and  hopeless  human 
misery.  A  tavern  in  a  Christian  city  in  the  thirteenth  cen¬ 
tury  meant  a  house  kept  to  afford  cheap  or  gratuitous 
hospitality  to  the  pilgrim  and  the  wayfarer,  in  which  all 
his  bodily  wants  were  reverently  attended  to  for  the  love 
of  God  much  more  than  for  lust  of  gain,  and  where  his 
faith,  his  virtue,  his  life  and  his  money  were  alike  safe  from 
every  danger.  A  tavern  in  the  nineteenth  century, — in 


444 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


whqd  was  once  a  Christian  country,  or  in  one  which  boasts  of 
its  transcendent  Christianity,  is —  ...  Well,  we  shall 

spare  yon  a  description  of  such  as  we  know  to  abound  in 
every  thoroughfare  of  this  vast  metropolis.  God  forbid 
that  the  immense  majority  of  our  readers  should  ever  be 
compelled  to  ask  or  to  accept  the  hospitality  of  such  abodes. 
For  the  weary  pilgrim  or  penniless  wayfarer  there  is  no 
room  in  the  luxurious  palaces  that  modern  progress  has 
substituted  to  the  taverns,  the  hospitals ,  hostelries  or  ho¬ 
tels ,  of  our  fathers ; — and  the  poor  traveler  who  can  af¬ 
ford  to  put  up  at  a  modern  tavern,  in  this  land  of  liberty, 
at  least, — will  find  but  little  that  resembles  Christian  hospi¬ 
tality,  and  but  few  safeguards  for  his  purse  or  his  virtue. 
The  scenes  of  reveling,  riotousness,  or  debauchery  which  be¬ 
came  the  habitual  characteristics  of  such  places  when  the 
Church  had  lost  the  privilege  of  protecting  the  traveler  and 
the  pilgrim,  and  when  these  had  ceased  to  be  reverenced  as 
sacred  persons,  were  unknown  in  taverns  or  hostelries  of  the 
golden  age  of  faith. 

WHAT  A  TAVEEH  OUGHT  TO  BE. 

Would  that  all  among  our  people  who  keep  taverns 
would  think  a  little  of  the  great  practical  truth  which  we 
here  hold  up  to  them  for  meditation,  and  thus  return  to  the 
Christian  customs  of  their  ancestors  !  It  is  because  the  mul¬ 
titude  walk  in  that  road  of  evil  custom  which  leads  to  dis¬ 
honor  here  and  eternal  misery*  hereafter,  that  we  would 
urge  upon  the  God-fearing  the  necessity  and  the  merit  of 
taking  the  right  path, — the  royal  highway  of  the  divine 
law. 

The  virtuous  master  and  mistress  of  Margaret  of  Louvain 
followed  faithfully  that  royal  road,  and  their  wonderful 
charity  and  heavenly  life  contributed  much  to  confirm  their 
humble  maid-servant  in  the  habits  contracted  in  the  poor 
home  of  her  virtuous  parents.  All  three  had  formed  the 
resolution  of  forsaking  a  secular  life  and  joining  the  Cister¬ 
cian  Order  ;  Margaret  had  even  made  a  vow  of  perpetual 
chastity  as  a  preliminary  to  her  future  religious  profession. 


GREAT  NUMBER  OF  CANONIZED  SERVANTS. 


445 


The  tavern  and  all  their  other  property  had  been  sold  by 
these  good  people,  and  the  money  brought  by  the  sale  hap¬ 
pened  to  be  in  the  house,  when  some  of  the  cutthroats  who 
always  thrive  in  the  best  communities  disguised  themselves 
as  pilgrims  and  knocked  for  admission  after  nightfall.  The 
master  of  the  house,  wishing  to  perform  one  more  crowning 
act  of  hospitality,  admitted  them  ;  and,  as  his  store  of  pro¬ 
visions  had  not  been  replenished,  he  sent  Margaret  to  a 
neighbor’ s  for  a  vessel  of  wine.  As  soon  as  she  was  out  of 
sight  her  masters  were  pitilessly  murdered  and  the  house 
was  ransacked  for  plunder. 

On  her  return  Margaret  was  seized  and  borne  away  to  a 
desert  place.  One  of  the  murderers  wished  her  to  become 
his  wife  ;  for  she  was  young  and  fair,  and  he  knew  her  to 
be  most  virtuous.  But  no  threats  or  persuasion  availed  to 
make  her  consent.  She  had  vowed,  she  said,  to  be  the 
bride  of  the  Crucified,  and  could  not  without  sacrilege  accept 
any  other  love.  The  men,  who  knew  not  how  to  dispose  of 
her,  became  enraged  at  her  resistance,  and  her  would-be 
husband  plunged  a  knife  into  her  heart.  Thus  died  Mar¬ 
garet  the  martyr  of  chastity,  crowning  by  this  glorious  wit¬ 
nessing  the  life  of  perfect  faithfulness  and  humility  she  had 
led  in  her  dear  master’ s  home.  The  body  was  thrown  into 
the  river  Dyle,  but  it  would  not  sink,  and  was  borne  upward 
against  the  stream  to  the  city,  where  the  multitude,  and 
among  them  the  sovereign  of  the  country,  Henry  I.,  Duke  of 
Lorraine,  beheld  the  prodigy.  The  body  was  reverently 
taken  from  the  river  and  solemnly  buried  in  the  church  of 
St.  Peter. 

GREAT  NUMBER  OF  CANONIZED  SERVANTS. 

It  must  not  be  thought  that  these  two  saintly  maidens,  liv¬ 
ing  at  the  same  time,  the  one  in  the  south  of  Europe  and  the 
other  in  the  north,  were  rare  moral  xfiienomena  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  Church.  It  is  far  otherwise.  That  history 
places  us  in  presence  of  a  cloud  of  such  heroic  souls, — to 
whom  the  Great  Mother  paid  the  highest  veneration,  in  order 
to  show  that  she  was  the  worthy  bride  of  Him  who  said, 
“  Blessed  are  the  poor  1  ” 


446 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


St.  Notburga  was  a  kitchen-maid.  “  Saints  Nereus  and 
Achilleus,  brothers,  over  whose  tombs  a  splendid  tomb  was 
raised  at  half  a  league  from  Rome,  were  servants  in  the 
house  of  Domitilla,  a  niece  of  Domitian,  and  their  remarks 
on  the  vanity  of  human  pomp  led  to  her  conversion.  St. 
Seraphia,  martyr,  was  a  servant  at  Rome  in  the  house  of 
Sabina,  a  widow  lady,  in  the  time  of  Adrian,  who  by  the 
example  of  her  maid’ s  conduct  was  converted,  all  along  with 
her  other  servants,  and  who,  becoming  herself  a  martyr, 
was  interred  by  the  side  of  her  blessed  maid.  St.  Maura 
the  martyr  wras  a  nursery-maid  at  Ravenna  in  the  time  of 
Decius,  who  secretly  converted  her  young  mistress,  Fusca, 
instructing  her  in  the  faith.”  *  St.  Genevieve,  the  patron 
saint  of  Paris,  was  but  a  poor  shepherdess,  tending  the 
flocks  of  a  master  in  the  desert  country  around  the  then  in¬ 
considerable  city.  Nor  is  the  enumeration  given  above  of 
the  servant  saints  in  any  way  complete.  Many  other  re-  • 
vered  names  have  been  preserved  by  her  who  is  the  loying 
and  immortal  mother  of  humanity,  among  whom  was  the 
young  slave  Blandina,  who  bore  such  glorious  witness  to 
Christ  at  Lyons  in  Gaul.  “I  am  a  Christian,”  she  would 
say  in  the  midst  of  most  horrible  and  repeated  tortures,  4  £  I 
am  a  Christian  :  no  evil  is  ever  committed  by  any  of  us  !  ” 
Among  them  also  was  Potamiana,  most  beautiful  and  most 
chaste,  who,  with  her  mother  Marcella,  was  put  to  death  in 
Egypt. 

ADVICE  TO  SERVANTS. 

In  presence  of  this  “  cloud  of  witnesses”  attesting  how 
Christ  and  his  Church  delight  to  honor  the  highest  virtue 
in  the  lowliest  condition,  we  desire  to  utter  solemn  words  of 
advice  and  exhortation  to  the  women-servants  whom  our 
“ Mirror”  may  reach.  Already  we  have  borne  most  willing 
testimony  to  the  boundless  generosity  of  our  servants  in 
both  hemispheres :  God  alone  can  becomingly  reward  their 
unceasing  and  incredible  sacrifices.  But  it  is  the  life-long 


*  Digby,  Compitum,  b.  i.,  c.  vi. 


HUMILITY. 


447 


experience  we  have  had  of  this  exhaustless  liberality,  this 
living  and  large-hearted  faith,  ever  ready  to  give  its  all  for 
the  cause  of  God  and  his  Church, — which  impels  us  to  be 
more  earnest  than  ever  in  showing  how  we  would  fain  make 
the  most  generous  return  that  is  within  the  power  of  a  sin¬ 
gle  priestly  heart,  by  pointing  out  a  few  of  the  virtues  and 
qualities  which  would  raise  servants  highest  in  the  esteem 
of  their  masters  and  in  the  reverence  of  all  mankind. 

HUMILITY. 

Do  not  attach  a  false  notion  to  this  word,  or  the  admirable 
and  most  necessary  virtue  which  it  designates.  The  world, 
which  does  not  care  to  have  a  correct  knowledge  either  of 
Christian  doctrine  or  of  Christian  morality, — the  world, 
which  sneers  at  the  terms  “ humble  ”  and  “  humility,’’ — as 
if  to  be  humble  one  must  needs  be  a  hypocrite,  and  as  if 
humility  was  only  a  mask  for  villany  and  deceit, — this  world 
must  be  enlightened  by  your  lives, — by  your  actions  much 
more  than  by  your  words, — as  to  the  true  sense  of  this  great 
and  fundamental  virtue. 

It  does  not  consist  in  professions  and  protestations,  or  in 
mere  interior  desires  and  sentiments.  It  consists  in  our  be¬ 
ing  ready  to  accept,  and  in  accepting  willingly,  humiliations 
put  on  us  by  others, — especially  when  they  are  undeserved. 
There  is  no  road  to  humility, — that  virtue  which  prompts 
us  to  wish -to  be  beneath  the  feet  of  others  because  we  are 
sinners  against  God’s  tremendous  majesty, — save  by  hu¬ 
miliation,  by  being  brought  down  and  humbled  before  men, 
put  to  shame  and  confusion  in  presence  of  those  whose 
honor  and  esteem  we  covet. 

Take  the  example  of  the  Divine  Master.  He  took  upon 
himself  the  expiation  of  our  sins ;  and  as  the  beginning  of 
sin  is  in  that  pride  which  sets  up  our  own  will  against  the 
will  of  the  Most  High,  “  He  humbled  himself,  becoming  obe- 
diant  unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross.”  The  terri¬ 
ble  humiliations  of  this  most  shameful  death  he  accepted 
before  taking  our  flesh  as  the  atonement  for  the  guilt  of 
pride.  In  taking  our  flesh,  however,  he  took  it  with  all  its 


448 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


pure  and  hallowed  affections,  with  every  thing  that  could 
not  mean  guilt  committed  by  himself,  or  any  other  condi¬ 
tion  incompatible  with  the  infinite  holiness  of  the  Godhead. 
Among  the  sentiments  and  affections  inherent  in  the  human 
heart  are  a  great  horror  of  intense  bodily  pain  and  an  insur¬ 
mountable  repugnance  toward  being  put  to  public  shame, 
or  charged  and  branded  with  an  infamy  undeserved  by 
one’s  own  deeds. 

This  is  the  meaning  of  that  agony  of  Christ’s  soul  in  the 
garden, — when  he  felt  that  Judas  and  his  band  were  already 
on  their  way  to  seize  his  person,  and  foresaw  the  insults 
and  outrages  to  be  heaped  on  himself  before  dawn,  as  a 
prelude  to  the  incomprehensible  humiliations, — tortures  of 
body,  and  tortures  of  soul, — of  the  morrow.  Hence  his 
agonized  heart-cry,  ‘  ‘  If  it  be  possible,  let  this  chalice  (this 
bitter  cup  of  shame)  pass  from  me  !  ”  The  Divine  Person 
incarnate  was  to  bear  in  his  human  body  and  human  soul 
the  dreadful  weight  of  our  guilt  and  of  its  expiation.  His 
chief  merit,  as  perfect  man,  lay  in  the  heroic  willingness 
with  which  he  accepted  what  was  most  abhorrent  to  flesh 
and  to  spirit, — the  torture  of  his  body  and  the  humiliation 
put  upon  his  soul.  “  Nevertheless  not  as  I  will,  but  as 
thou  [wilt].”  Now,  see  him  rising  up  from  his  place  of 
prayer,  to  face  Judas  and  his  band,  to  face  Herod  and  his 
court,  to  face  the  hooting  multitude  in  the  street,  to  face 
the  scourging  and  the  crowning  with  thorns,  to  face  the 
shameful  cross,  and  to  carry  it  so  far  as  his  strength  per¬ 
mitted  through  the  crowded  city, — and  to  stretch  himself 
on  it  a  willing  victim  for  every  one  of  us !  And  all  the 
while  allowing  himself  to  be  led  like  a  lamb  to  the  slaugh¬ 
ter,  meekly,  silently,  uncomplainingly, — he  the  innocent 
and  the  most  holy  ! 

This  is  why  the  saints,  who  thirsted  to  be  most  like  the 
Master,  to  follow  him  most  closely,  did  not  wait  till  humi¬ 
liation  and  shame  came  to  them,  but  went  to  meet  it.  St. 
Ignatius  Martyr,  condemned  (at  least  so  he  believed  and 
hoped  when  he  wrote  the  words)  to  be  devoured  by  wild 
beasts  in  the  Homan  amphitheater,  could  not  contain  his 


HUMILITY. 


449 


joy  or  restrain  his  impatience  :  “Would  that  I  could  enjoy 
the  wild  beasts!  Would  that  I  were  ground  between  the 
lion’s  jaws,  so  that  I  become  the  wheat  of  Christ !  ”  And 
his  great  namesake,  long  centuries  afterward, — Ignatius  de 
Loyola, — sallying  forth  in  his  matted  hair  and  unwashed 
beard,  and  sordid  raiment  (he  the  proud,  sensitive  soldier  of 
yesterday !)  to  court  the  jeers  and  jibes  of  the  street  rabble 
of  Manresa,  that  he  might  learn  to  keep  down  his  rebellious 
spirit  and  the  resistance  of  a  soul  that  yearned  for  praise 
and  distinction. 

There  is  no  humility,  then,  save  through  humiliation ! 
If  you  have  caught  our  meaning,  therefore,  — you  now  un¬ 
derstand  the  sense  of  the  words  which  the  Master  was  wont 
to  address  to  all  who  wished  to  become  his  followers :  “Take 
up  thy  cross,  and  follow  me  !  ”  As  you  would  take  from 
the  hand  of  a  noble  general  a  brilliant  uniform  to  wear  in 
the  service  under  him,  or  a  flag  to  carry  and  defend  in  the 
foremost  ranks  of  battle, — as  in  entering  a  nobleman’s  ser¬ 
vice  you  would  put  on  his  livery  ; — so,  in  making  the  very 
first  step  in  the  road  along  which  the  Crucified  leads  you, 
take ,  accept,  love,  embrace  shame,  humiliation, — the  Cross, 
in  one  word,  as  the  glorious  livery  which  distinguishes  the 
sort  of  courage,  of  bravery,  of  heroism,  which  marks  the 
Christian,  the  true  child  of  God  ! 

Hence  the  sublime  lesson  which  St.  Peter  (to  be  soon  cru¬ 
cified  like  his  loved  Master)  teaches  all  servants  :  .  .  .  . 
“Unto  this  you  have  been  called  ;  because  Christ  also  suf¬ 
fered  for  us,  leaving  you  an  example,  that  you  should  fol¬ 
low  in  his  steps.” 

Oh !  do  not  pass  away  lightly  from  this  divine  lesson. 
Look  well  into  the  mirror  which  the  great  disciple’ s  words 
and  example,  and  the  greater  Master’s  life  and  death  hold 
up  to  you, — if  you  would  understand  aright  how  you  are  to 
make  your  own  service  a  true  following  of  Christ. 

Humility, — subjection,  heartfelt  and  loving  obedience, 
and  patience  under  wrong, — has  to  be  the  corner-stone  of 
the  edifice  of  your  salvation, — of  the  salvation  and  sanctifica- 
:  tion  of  every  Christian  servant.  This  is  the  reason  that  St. 


450 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Peter  says,  “  Servants  be  subject  to  your  masters  ;  .  .  . 

not  only  to  the  good  and  gentle,  but  also  to  the  froward. 
For  this  is  thankworthy,  if,  for  conscience  toward  God,  a 
man  endure  sorrows,  suffering  wrongfully.” 


THE  PRACTICE  OF  HUMILITY. 

It  consists  in  accepting  with  a  true  and  heartfelt  submis¬ 
sion  the  service  to  which  you  bind  yourself,  knowing  well 
that  such  service  is  not  degrading  in  the  eyes  of  men,  but 
that  you  can  yourselves  make  it  most  honorable  by  your 
gentleness,  your  truthfulness,  and  your  fidelity.  It  cannot 
but  be  honorable  in  the  eyes  of  God,  if  you  only  look  up 
to  him  as  the  person  whom  you  serve,  obey,  and  study  to 
please  in  your  master  and  mistress.  The  very  foundation 
of  practical  humility  is  in  this  supernatural  view  of  your 
relation  to  your  superiors.  If  you  are  guided  by  low  views, 
human  motives,  and  mere  earthly  feelings,  you  will  look 
upon  your  service  as  a  yoke  which  degrades  you,  and  per¬ 
form  your  duties  only  because  you  cannot  help  yourselves, 
or  for  the  sake  of  the  miserable  wages  you  work  for.  God 
help  the  Christian  servant  that  allows  her  mind  to  be  dark¬ 
ened  by  these  low  views,  or  her  heart  to  be  narrowed  by 
such  false  pride  and  such  greed  of  gain  ! 

Consider  that  whatever  you  do  and  suffer,  you  undergo 
and  do  for  his  sake  who  is  Lord  and  Father  over  all,  and  in 
imitation  of  Him  who  spent  thirty  years  under  the  roof  of 
Joseph  the  carpenter,  plying  the  same  trade  till  he  began 
his  public  missionary  career,  and  all  the  while  obeying  his 
parents  with  unfeigned  reverence  and  submission. 

If  you  are  a  servant  after  Christ’s  own  heart,  you  will  be 
gentle, — invariably  gentle, — gentle  not  only  when  treated 
with  kindness  and  deference  by  your  masters  and  fellow- 
servants,  but  more  especially  so  when  treated  with  unkind* 
ness,  incivility  and  injustice.  Let  your  chief  aim  be  to 
please  him,  and  obtain  his  praise,  “  Who  when  he  was  re¬ 
viled,  did  not  revile ;  when  he  suffered,  he  threatened 


OBEDIENCE  WHICH  IS  NOT  HUMILITY . 


451 


not ;  but  delivered  himself  to  him  that  judged  him  un¬ 
justly.”  * 

Be  far  more  anxious  to  acquire  and  increase  your  store  of 
merit  with  the  Divine  Master,  by  not  only  obeying  faith¬ 
fully  and  punctually  when  you  are  bidden  to  do  what  is 
pleasing,  honorable,  and  of  easy  accomplishment,  but  more 
particularly  by  loving  and  prompt  obedience  when  you  are 
commanded  to  do  what  is  distasteful,  apparently  degrading, 
or  most  difficult  and  laborious. 

The  willingness  shown  in  obeying  diligently  and  accom¬ 
plishing  most  difficult  things,  when  you  are  prompted  to  do 
so  by  kind  words,  by  praise,  or  by  your  affection  for  your 
mistress, — may  be  very  praiseworthy  in  itself, — but  it  is  not 
humility.  True  humility  consists  in  obeying  a  harsh  order 
or  in  doing  what  is  most  irksome,  and  that  for  a  person  who 
evidently  dislikes  you  or  is  disagreeable  in  many  ways, — 
solely  because  you  who  are  a  sinner,  and  a  lowly  creature, 
are  striving  to  imitate  the  obedience,  the  patience,  the  he¬ 
roic  perseverance  of  the  Lord  and  Master. 

OBEDIENCE  WHICH  IS  NOT  HUMILITY. 

There  are  very  many  good  servants,  who  are  sincerely 
desirous  of  being  humble  and  obedient,  but  who  entirely 
misunderstand  the  way  of  being  so.  They  will  do  any  thing 
and  work  themselves  beyond  their  strength  to  please  a  mis¬ 
tress  or  a  master  who  have  none  but  pleasant  looks  and 
kind  words  for  them  ; — these  good  girls  are  also  very 
punctual  in  receiving  the  sacrament,  and  fancy  perhaps 
that  they  are  truly  pious  and  pleasing  to  God.  But  some 
of  them  cannot  endure  a  single  word  of  dispraise,  a  single 
unkind  look,  and  will  either  fly  into  a  towering  passion,  or 
become  moody  and  surly,  will  brood  for  days  over  what 
they  consider  an  injustice  or  an  insult,  and  will  only  resume 
their  cheerful  looks  and  good  temper  when  they  are  again 
fed  with  praise.  This  is  any  thing  but  humility. 


*  1  Peter  ii.  23. 


452 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


Humility  is  self-denial  as  well  as  self-control.  It  denies 
and  humbles  this  natural,  proud,  vain,  praise-loving  self  of 
ours,— and  is  glad  when  pride  and  self-love  have  to  suffer 
and  to  bleed.  One  of  the  first  efforts  of  true  humility, 
which  makes  us  little  and  of  no  account  in  our  own  eyes, — • 
is  to  make  us  patient,  silent,  self- controlled  under  reproof, 
insult  and  wrong.  Let  such  moody,  uncertain,  and  irascible 
persons  look  into  the  mirror  of  Christ’,  s  example  and  the 
examples  of  his  saints,  and  set  about  examining  their  con¬ 
sciences.  They  have  yet  to  know  what  humility  is,  and  to 
make  the  first  step  on  the  road  of  that  virtue  which  alone 
can  render  them  followers  of  the  Master. 

Let  humility,  therefore,  keep  your  soul  in  peace  when 
the  sound  of  harsh,  unjust  and  cruel  words  is  in  your  ears. 
But,  this  same  sweet  virtue  will  impel  you  to  be  a  peace¬ 
maker  among  your  fellow-servants.  Learn  to  suffer  from 
them  with  the  same  unalterable  patience  with  which  you 
endure  the  reproaches  and  ill-treatment  of  your  masters. 
You  are  anxious  to  become  more  Christ-like  every  day  ; 
then  make  your  profit  of  every  opportunity  sent  you.  It 
is  a  necessity  for  you  to  have  that  well-grounded  humility 
which  will  enable  you  to  amass  daily  and  hourly  great 
treasures  of  patience.  Imitate,  therefore,  the  thrift  of  the 
peddler  on  the  street,  or  the  shopkeeper  behind  his  counter. 
What  cares  either  of  them  for  the  quality  or  rank  of  the 
passers-by  or  the  customers  who  come  and  go,  provided 
these  pay  their  money  for  what  they  buy,  and  thus  increase 
the  gains  of  the  seller  ? 

“  A  true  lover  of  Jesus,”  wrote  an  English  priest,  dead 
in  1395,  “  when  he  suffereth  harm  from  his  neighbor  is  so 
strengthened  through  grace  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  is  made 
so  humble,  so  patient,  so  peaceable,  and  that  so  really,  that 
what  harm  or  wrong  soever  he  suffereth  from  his  neighbor, 
he  still  preserveth  his  humility,  he  despiseth  him  not,  he 
judgeth  him  not,  but  he  prayeth  for  him  in  his  heart,  and 
hath  pity  and  compassion  on  him  much  more  tenderly  than 
of  another  man  who  never  did  him  harm  ;  and  verily  loveth 
him  better,  and  more  fervently  desireth  the  salvation  of  his 


TRUE  FIDELITY  BEGOTTEN  OF  TRUE  HUMILITY.  453 


soul,  because  be  seeth  tha*t  be  shall  have  so  much  spiritual 
profit  out  of  that  evil  deed  of  that  man  though  it  be  against 
his  will.  But  this  love  and  this  meekness  is  wrought  only 
by  the  Holy  Ghost  above  the  nature  of  man  in  them  whom 
he  maketh  the  true  lovers  of  Jesus.”  * 

TRUE  FIDELITY  BEGOTTEN  OF  TRUE  HUMILITY. 

This  uncomplaining  subjection  to  your  masters,  founded 
on  the  love  of  the  Crucified,  and  practiced  in  order  to  be¬ 
come  in  all  things  most  like  to  our  Model,  cannot  fail  to  in¬ 
spire  love  as  well  as  reverence  for  those  to  whom  you  owe 
obedience.  “  Whatsoever  you  do,  do  it  from  the  heart,  as 
to  the  Lord  and  not  to  men.  .  .  .  Serve  ye  the  Lord 

Christ.”  Such  is  the  rule  laid  down  by  St.  Paul. 

Serve  your  masters,  then,  as  you  would  Christ  himself. 
Make  all  their  interests  your  own.  Be  as  saving  of  their 
substance  as  if  it  belonged  to  Christ,  and  you  had  a  strict  ac¬ 
count  to  render  to  him,  at  the  end  of  each  day,  of  the  em¬ 
ployment  of  every  moment  of  your  time  and  the  use  made 
of  every  thing  intrusted  to  you. 

This  conscientious  fidelity,  must  always  recall  to  your 
mind  that  you  are  not  to  lose  or  to  waste  ;  and,  particularly 
that  you  are  not  to  give  away  any  thing  whatsoever,  with¬ 
out  your  master  or  mistress’s  knowledge  and  consent. 

Stewards  in  great  families  are  intrusted  with  purchasing 
and  buying  much  ; — they  are  in  conscience  bound  to  con¬ 
sult  their  master’s  interest  in  every  outlay,  and  to  do  no¬ 
thing  through  favor  or  human  respect  which  would  bring 
loss  to  those  whom  they  serve. 

And  a  cook  or  kitchen-maid  has  a  like  responsibility : 
she  can  only  make  such  use  of  what  is  intrusted  to  her  as 
her  mistress  wishes.  But  we  are  touching  here  on  a  point 
which  most  concerns  the  good  name  of  all  servant  girls. 
We  beseech  them,  therefore,  as  they  love  their  own  honor, 
to  weigh  well  the  advice  here  given. 


*  Walter  Hilton,  “  The  Scale  of  Perfection.” 


4 


454 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


HONESTY  ONE  CHARACTERISTIC  OF  FIDELITY. 

It  is  a  cardinal  principle  tliat  we  cannot  dispose  of  what 
is  not  our  own  without  injastice  or  wrong  to  the  owner. 
No  matter  how  praiseworthy  a  thing  it  may  be  to  give  to  the 
poor,  or  to  be  generous  to  the  Church  or  to  charitable  insti¬ 
tutions,  we  must  not  presume  to  think  that  we  have  a  right 
to  feed  or  to  clothe  the  poor  with  what  is  another  person’ s, 
or  that  God  will  reward  us  for  giving  to  religion  or  religious 
institutions  what  we  cannot  give  without  positive  sin.  I  have 
no  right  to  put  my  hand  in  another  man’ s  pocket,  or  in  his 
purse,  wherever  I  may  find  it,  and  make  myself  charitable 
or  generous  at  his  expense.  What  I  thus  take  and  give 
away  I  am  bound  in  conscience  to  restore. 

To  be  sure  there  may  be  poverty  and  want  all  around  you, 
and  your  heart  may  be  sorely  touched  by  the  misery  you 
see,  or  think  you  see,  in  those  who  knock  at  your  master’s 
door  for  assistance.  But  you  are  not  obliged  to  give  alms 
for  him you  can  only  dispense  in  charity  at  the  door  what¬ 
ever  your  master  or  mistress  places  at  your  disposal.  Like 
St.  Zita,  you  can  give  your  own  food  or  a  portion  of  it,  but 
this  is  what  many,  very  many  can  ill  afford  to  do, — as  their 
own  pittance  is  barely  sufficient  for  their  sustenance.  In 
no  case  can  they  go  to  the  provision  closet,  and,  against 
their  master  or  mistress’s  will,  take  from  it  wherewith  to 
help  either  the  beggar  at  the  door,  or  the  needy  among 
their  own  acquaintance.  This  would  be  simply  stealing. 

There  is  only  one  thing  for  you  to  do  :  have  a  perfectly 
clear  and  thorough  understanding  with  your  mistress  about 
what  you  can  or  cannot  give,  as  well  as  about  the  use  to 
which  all  articles  of  food  in  your  charge  are  to  be  put.  A 
mistress  may  not  be  charitable  or  generous  either  to  the 
poor  or  to  her  own  servants.  But,  so  long  as  you  are  in 
her  household,  you  have  only  to  be  true  to  God,  to  your 
own  conscience  ; — to  be  faithful  to  your  trust,  and  never,— 
no,  not  in  the  most  trifling  matter, — to  be  dishonest  under 
pretext  of  being  charitable,  or  kind-hearted,  or  generous. 


TIi  UTHFULNESS. 


455 


FAITHFULNESS  IN  NOT  DISCLOSING  FAMILY  SECRETS. 

This  is  still  more  important  than  honesty.  For  the  honor 
and  good  name  of  a  family  are  of  infinitely  more  impor¬ 
tance  than  the  gold  and  silver  in  their  treasure  chest,  or 
the  silks  and  jewels  in.  their  wardrobe.  We  can  put  back 
what  we  have  wrongfully  taken  or  given  away, — and  yet 
how  hard  do  we  find  it  to  make  this  restitution  %  and  how 
many  fail  in  this  obligation  ?  But  the  wrong  often  done  to 
a  family’s  honor  by  rashly  or  criminally  declaring  what 
may  turn  to  their  disgrace  in  the  public  estimation,  is  a 
thing  which  can  seldom  if  ever  be  repaired. 

When  you  are  admitted  into  a  family  as  a  servant,  con¬ 
sider  yourself,  in  the  eyes  of  God,  as  a  member  of  that  fam¬ 
ily,  and  be  as  careful  of  its  secrets — even  in  speaking  to 
your  fellow-servants, — as  you  would  be  of  those  of  your  own 
father  and  mother  ;  guard  its  honor,  and  defend  it  as  jeal¬ 
ously  as  you  would  the  honor  of  the  mother  who  bore  you. 
Nay, — that  you  may  look  higher  than  mere  nature, — look 
upon  the  family  as  God’s  own  household,  in  which  you 
serve  ;  and  in  promoting  its  interests,  and  protecting  its 
good  name,  bethink  you  it  is  to  the  Divine  Majesty  you 
are  doing  service. 

These  were  the  rules  and  the  sentiments  familiar  to  those 
of  your  condition  in  the  Ages  of  Faith  ;  they  are  the  senti¬ 
ments  and  the  rules  of  the  Church.  Remember, — especial¬ 
ly  in  a  country  which  is  not  Catholic, — that  your  fidelity 
and  honesty  redound  to  the  credit  of  your  religion,  just  as 
surely  as  your  untruthfulness  and  your  dishonesty  redound 
to  its  disgrace. 

So  is  it  with  another  virtue  closely  allied  to  fidelity, — 

TRUTHFULNESS. 

It  is  said  of  that  “ cloud  of  witnesses”  into  whose  com¬ 
pany  wre  introduced  you  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter,— 
of  St.  Zita,  and  St.  Margaret  of  Louvain,  and  that  glori- 


456 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


ous  virgin-band  who  attend  the  footsteps  of  the  Lamb  in 
heaven  and  on  earth, — “In  their  month  was  found  no  lie ; 
for  they  are  without  spot  before  the  throne  of  God.”  * 
This  was  the  beautiful  description  of  the  Christian  maiden 
given  us  by  the  inspired  pen  of  the  virgin-apostle,  so  dear 
to  the  Master,  and  who  had  alone  of  all  the  Twelve  followed 
Him  to  the  very  foot  of  the  Cross  :  Their  mouth  never  ut¬ 
tered  a  lie,  their  purity  was  as  stainless  as  the  new-fallen 
snow  on  the  mountain-top, — unblemished  chastity  and  un¬ 
impeachable  truthfulness  !  What  a  mirror  for  the  children 
of  God  through  all  time  ! 

Hence  it  is  that  the  other  great  apostle — “  the  Chosen 
Vessel” — Paul,  wrote:  “Walk  ye  as  the  children  of  the 
light :  for  the  fruit  of  the  light  is  in  all  goodness,  and  jus¬ 
tice,  and  truth.”  f 

Were  this  book  to  produce  no  other  benefit  to  souls,  than 
to  inspire  you,  O  daughters  of  the  Great  Mother, — “the 
Pillar  and  the  Ground  of  Truth,” — with  the  firm  determina¬ 
tion  to  cultivate  this  one  virtue  as  if  your  happiness  here, 
and  your  salvation  hereafter  depended  solely  on  your  truth¬ 
fulness, — it  would  be  a  most  blessed  result  to  our  painstak¬ 
ing.  Hever,  then, — we  beseech  you, — leave  it  in  the  power 
of  man,  woman,  or  child,  or  even  of  the  angel  who  watches 
over  your  soul, — to  accuse  you  of  telling  a  lie,  or  prevari¬ 
cating  in  the  slightest  degree  or  the  most  trifling  matter. 

With  the  great  St.  Francis  of  Sales,  you  must  be  ever 
able  to  say  that  no  earthly  love,  or  hope,  or  fear  could  even 
make  you  carry  a  falsehood  on  your  lips  any  more  than  a 
forged  paper  in  your  bosom.  You,  too,  should  ever  say 
with  this  great  Doctor  of  the  Church  : 

“  I  belong  to  the  blood  of  the  ancient  Gauls.  What  is 
on  my  tongue  is  precisely  what  comes  from  my  heart.  The 
prudence  of  the  world,  and  the  artifices  of  the  flesh  belong 
to  the  children  of  the  world  ;  but  the  children  of  God  have 
no  double  meaning  and  no  dissimulation.” 

As  true  religion  would  be  only  a  living  lie  without  true 


*  Apocalypse  xiv.  5. 


f  Ephesians  v.  8,  9. 


CHARITY  TOWARD  PERSONS  OF  ANOTHER  BELIEF.  457 


charity  in  onr  practice,  so  you  must,  as  you  hope  for  God’s 
favorable  judgment,  make  it  a  chief  study  to  cultivate  peace 
and  charity  among  your  fellow-servants. 

It  is  always  our  interest,  and  should  be  our  policy  to  be 
on  good  terms  with  all  those  in  whose  company  we  are 
obliged  to  live  for  any  length  of  time.  It  is  a  poor  excuse 
to  say  that  they  are  disagreeable  and  distasteful  to  us. 
There  never  yet  existed  a  family  in  which  parents,  children, 
and  servants  were  exactly  of  the  same  amiable  disposition. 
The  practice  of  charity,  of  the  home  charities  in  particu¬ 
lar, — is  only  so  praiseworthy,  so  meritorious,  and  so  richly 
rewarded  by  the  Master,  because  it  consists  in  bearing  with 
each  other’s  infirmities. 

St.  Paul  addressed  to  the  Gauls  of  Asia  Minor, — the  first 
known  converts  from  among  the  great  Celtic  race,  the  fol¬ 
lowing  brief  admonitions  :  “By  charity  of  the  Spirit  serve 
one  another ;  ”  *  and  “  Bear  ye  one  another’s  burdens  ;  and 
so  shall  you  fulfil  the  law  of  Christ.”  f 

CHARITY  TOWARD  PERSONS  OF  ANOTHER  BELIEF. 

Living,  as  you  are  often  forced  to  do,  in  families  profess¬ 
ing  a  creed  different  from  your  own,  and,  not  unfrequently, 
bitterly  hostile  to  it, — there  are  two  things  you  must  heed. 
Judge  them  kindly,  and  show  them  all  the  respect  and 
fidelity  which  you  would  to  masters  of  your  own  faith.  In 
this  respect,  your  duties  toward  them  are  absolutely  the 
same.  Be  patient  toward  them  when  they  assail  or  ridi¬ 
cule  your  religion :  when  this  happens, — your  only  resource 
lies  in  making  no  answer  whatever,  and  in  not  manifesting 
anger  or  resentment.  Your  edifying  conduct  will  be  the 
most  effectual  means  of  dispelling  their  prejudices, — preju¬ 
dices  which  are  those  of  birth  and  education. 

The  other  precaution  is, — never  to  permit  yourself  to  ex¬ 
cuse  or  extenuate  what  they  blame  or  ridicule.  You  are 
not  expected  to  know  history  or  theology,  or  to  give  ex¬ 
planation  about  things  far  above  the  common  intelligence. 


*  Galatians  v.  23. 


f  Ibidem,  vi.  2. 


458 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


But  be  not  ashamed  of  the  truth  which  is  in  you,  and  never 
blush  for  that  Great  Church  who  is  the  only  Mother  of 
Christendom,  and  whose  authority  can  alone  restore  the 
Christian  religion  to  its  old-time  supremacy  over  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  men. 

Thereby,  you  will  be  true  to  the  Truth  itself — the  ser¬ 
vants  of  God  and  his  Truth. 

Of  the  innumerable  and  inestimable  services  rendered  to 
His  cause, — the  cause  of  that  same  Truth, — by  servant  girls 
in  our  day,  more  than  one  chapter  and  more  than  one  booh 
might  be  written.  There  is  nothing  so  eloquent,  so  irre¬ 
sistible  as  such  a  life  as  that  of  Saint  Zita,  or  Saint  Marga¬ 
ret,  or  any  one  of  the  host  of  illustrious  women  who  have 
sanctified  themselves  in  the  lowly  position  of  servants,  and 
have  thus  shown  that  it  is  not  the  place  which  makes  the 
great-souled  man  or  woman,  but  true  greatness  of  soul  that 
ennobles  and  hallows  the  place. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 


SUPPLEMENTARY. 

As  we  began  this  book  by  the  description  of  the  home 
and  its  sanctities,  so  do  we  now  return  to  it  before  con¬ 
cluding,  to  point  out  two  of  the  most  precious  and  meri¬ 
torious  forms  of  motherly  devotion, — in  the  person  of  the 
invalid  mother,  whom  God  keeps  on  her  bed  of  sickness, 
for  years,  like  a  living  lesson  of  heroism  in  suffering,  and 
the  stepmother  who  takes  on  herself  the  painful  and  diffi¬ 
cult  duties  of  motherhood  toward  the  children  of  another. 
There  are  so  many  of  both  of  these  classes  to  be  found  in 
Christian  homes, — women  of  angelic  lives,  models  of  per¬ 
fect  patience  and  long-suffering  meekness  !  Let  the  lessons 
their  examples  teach  us  thus  complete  the  entire  circle  of 
home-duties  and  home-virtues. 

THE  INVALID  MOTHER. 

A  young  married  woman  of  uncommon  beauty  and  ac¬ 
complishments,  extensively  known  for  her  successful  activ¬ 
ity  in  every  cause  of  public  beneficence  or  usefulness,  was 
paralyzed  a  few  months  after  the  birth  of  her  sixth  child. 
She  was  the  idol  of  her  household  and  her  large  circle 
of  acquaintance.  For  she  had  the  rare,  rare  felicity  of  cre¬ 
ating  neither  envy  nor  jealousy  by  all  her  shining  quali¬ 
ties,  and  by  her  untiring  labors  outside  of  her  own  home. 
She  had,  in  the  truest  sense  of  the  word,  educated  her 
husband,  whose  mind  and  heart,  both  very  richly  endowed* 

459 


460 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD . 


liad  been  neglected  in  consequence  of  the  early  death  of  his 
mother;  she  had  spurred  him  on  to  be  foremost  in  his 
profession,  and  he  was  almost  at  its  head,  when  this  ter¬ 
rible  affliction  befell  them ;  and  she  had  made  him  a  sincere 
and  practical  Christian.  She  would  allow  no  one  to  teach 
her  little  children  but  herself, — and  her  training  of  them 
proved  that  she  was  just  as  admirable  in  imparting  knowl¬ 
edge  as  she  was  in  her  facility  for  acquiring  it.  She  had 
three  sisters-in-law  in  the  house,  one  her  equal  in  years, 
and  the  two  others  her  juniors ;  she  had  taught  and 
trained  them,  making  them  adore  her  first,  and  then  in¬ 
spiring  them  with  a  keen  appetite  for  knowledge.  And  she 
had  made  it  a  duty  she  never  neglected,  from  the  very  first 
day  she  entered  her  husbahd’s  home,  to  catechize  her  nu¬ 
merous  servants,  teaching  such  of  them  as  did  not  know 
their  letters,  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic. 

And  most  touching  it  was  to  see  the  grief  and  consterna¬ 
tion  of  these  good  servants,  when  it  was  first  announced 
that  their  worshiped  mistress  was  in  imminent  danger  of 
death.  The  coachman  who  was  sent  in  haste  for  the  priest 
— a  great,  burly  old  cavalry-man,  who  had  seen  twenty 
battles — could  scarcely  tell  his  message  intelligibly,  and 
wept  all  the  way  back  to  the  house.  The  rest  of  the  ser¬ 
vants  were  in  the  hall  reciting,-  as  best  they  could,  the 
Litany  of  the  Saints.  The  little  patient  herself  and  her 
noble  husband  were  worthy  of  each  other, — he  holding  her 
hand  and  whispering  sweet  words  of  comfort  and  resig¬ 
nation  to  the  Divine  Will.  But  God  spared  that  precious 
life  for  ten  years  more.  The  use  of  her  lower  limbs,  how¬ 
ever,  she  never  recovered. 

But — as  her  husband  afterward  testified — never  once  in 
their  most  unreserved  intimacy,  did  she  express  the  faint¬ 
est  regret  at  being  thus  rendered  inactive  and  helpless  in 
the  very  prime  of  all  her  glorious  utility.  She  would 
repeat  continually,  that  this  was  God’s  crowning  mercy  to 
her,  the  pledge  of  her  predestination,  her  being  thus  nailed 
to  her  cross  with  her  dear  Lord.  All  her  prayers  were 
said,  all  her  daily  actions  performed  during  these  ten 


THE  INVALID  MOTHER. 


461 


years  in  thanksgiving  for  this  most  precious  boon  of  suf¬ 
fering. 

Nor  did  she,  so  far  as  her  physician  permitted,  and  when 
her  recovered  strength  allowed  her,  give  over  to  others  the 
care  of  instructing  her  children,  or  of  finishing  the  educa¬ 
tion  of  her  younger  sister-in-law.  Nor  did  she  discontinue 
her  efforts  to  benefit  the  poor  of  the  city  and  neighborhood, 
or  to  encourage  every  project  in  favor  of  religion.  From 
her  sick-bed  she  still  directed  all  her  former  fellow-laborers 
who  more  than  ever  revered  her  and  followed  her  counsels. 

But  who  can  speak  worthily  of  the  devoted  care  of  every 
individual  in  that  household  for  one  so  unselfish  as  was 
their  beloved  invalid  \  Her  sisters,  her  children,  her  ser¬ 
vants  all  vied  with  each  other  in  their  ardent  desire  to  do  her 
every  service  her  condition  required.  They  could  scarcely 
endure  to  see  any,  even  among  her  near  relatives,  allowed 
the  privilege  of  waiting  on  her  during  her  long  nights  of 
torture.  For  the  last  eighteen  months  of  her  life  were  one 
long  agony.  Life  seemed  to  retreat  slowly  from  one  mem¬ 
ber  to  another,  till  she  could  move  nothing  but  her  head  ; 
but  there  the  sweet  soul  dwelt  serene  to  the  end,  like  the 
mistress  of  an  inundated  house,  as  the  destroying  waters 
rise  steadily  around  her,  finds  her  last  refuge  on  the  roof¬ 
top, — there,  with  cheerful  countenance  and  brave,  loving 
words,  consoling  her  dear  ones  while  all  is  slowly  under¬ 
mined  and  swept  away  beneath  her. 

It  was,  indeed,  a  privilege  to  listen  to  the  inspired  words 
about  God,  and  duty,  and  bearing  the  cross  after  Christ, 
and  the  glories  of  the  everlasting  kingdom,  that  she  poured 
forth  unceasingly  to  all  who  approached  her  ;  it  was  like  a 
lesson  from  the  “  Imitation  of  Christ  ”  to  look  for  a  few  mo¬ 
ments  on  that  |3ale,  sweet  face  all  aglow  with  the  light  and 
love  of  the  world  into  which  she  seemed  to  have  entered. 
.  .  .  And  when  all  was  over,  and  the  patient  sufferer  was 
at  rest  forever,  the  noble  husband  arose  from  his  knees, 
and  with  uplifted  arms,  as  if  he  too  would  follow  his  be¬ 
loved  companion,  exclaimed,  “I  thank  thee,  O  my  God! 
the  lessons  of  such  a  life  and  such  a  death  are  to  me  and 


462 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


mine  the  most  precious  of  all  thy  favors  !  ”  And  forthwith 
he  made  all  present  unite  with  him  in  singing  the  Te  Deum. 

How  many  such  mothers  are  to  be  found  in  families  of  all 
classes,  and  what  beautiful  examples  of  filial  piety,  and  un¬ 
wearied  devotedness  on  the  part  of  families — even  the  poor¬ 
est  and  most  sadly  burdened — could  we  not  relate,  were  it 
not  that  we  are  warned  to  bring  these  teachings  to  a  timely 
conclusion  ! 

THE  STEPMOTHER. 

We  must  not  part  with  this  most  worshipful  embodiment 
of  human  goodness, — the  true  mother, — the  queen  and  idol 
of  the  home,  without  doing  reverence  to  another  figure, 
often  called  by  death  and  necessity  to  fill  the  mother’s  place 
in  the  household,  and  to  discharge  toward  her  orphans  the 
sacred  obligations  attached  to  the  place  of  parent. 

If  there  is  any  thing  on  earth  which  can  compensate  a 
child  for  the  loss  of  a  mother  at  that  age  when  the  inspired 
love  of  a  true  motherly  heart  can  read  clearly  the  instincts 
of  the  childish  soul,  and  when  her  firm  and  tender  hand  is 
so  needed  to  unfold  what  is  good  and  repress  what  is  evil — 
that  compensation  can  only  be  found  in  the  womanly  wis¬ 
dom  and  devotion  of  a  second  mother — of  her  whom  the 
world  outside  the  family  designate  as  stepmother. 

Bad  stepmothers  are  the  exceptions  to  the  generality 
of  devoted,  conscientious,  and  self-sacrificing  women,  who 
are  selected  by  widowed  fathers,  with  a  fond  parental 
solicitude,  to  be  true  mothers  to  their  orphaned  children. 
Heed  we  speak  here  of  the  sore  necessity  which  so  often 
compels  a  father,  in  whose  soul  the  dead  still  lives  and  is 
loved  with  an  enduring  love,  to  choose  a  second  mother  for 
his  children,  a  mistress  for  his  household?  Even  among 
the  upper  and  wealthy  classes,  where  so  many  means  can 
be  devised  for  obtaining  persons  to  educate  young  orphans, 
there  is  often  a  peremptory  reason  for  a  second  marriage. 
But  among  the  laboring  classes  this  necessity  is  far  other¬ 
wise  urgent  and  frequent.  So,  glancing  merely  at  the  rea¬ 
sons  which  justify  the  best  of  parents  in  contracting  an 


WHAT  MAKES  A  STEPMOTHER’S  POSITION  IRKSOME.  463 


alliance  which  is  repugnant  to  their  own  finest  sense,  and 
without  even  naming  such  causes,  we  proceed  to  plead  in 
favor  of  the  stepmother,  before  describing  her  duties. 

WHAT  MAKES  A  STEPMOTHER’S  POSITION  IRKSOME. 

In  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  the  relatives  of  a 
deceased  wife,  even  when  they  are  good  and  virtuous  peo¬ 
ple,  look  with  coldness  or  aversion  on  the  woman  who 
takes  the  place  of  mother  toward  the  children  of  their  lost 
daughter  and  sister.  And  it  is  almost  impossible,  if  the 
orphans  are  of  an  age  to  understand  the  difference  between 
a  mother  and  a  stepmother,  that  they  should  not  be  made 
to  show  these  unkindly  feelings.  The  lot  of  a  stepmother 
is,  therefore,  not  an  enviable  one.  And  where  she  is  a  per¬ 
son  who  accepts  the  position  and  its  responsibilities  with 
the  firm  purpose  of  doing,  to  the  very  best  of  her  power,  a 
true  mother’s  part,  she  is  most  deserving  of  sympathy, 
support,  and  unlimited  kindness. 

It  is  most  certainly  the  duty  of  the  deceased  wife’ s  fam¬ 
ily,  instead  of  putting  an  obstacle  in  the  way  of  her  suc¬ 
cessor,  to  aid  her,  on  the  contrary,  toward  the  discharge  of 
her  difficult  and  delicate  office.  It  is  their  duty,  because 
the  dearest  interests  of  the  orphans  themselves  are  involved 
in  the  education  their  second  mother  will  give  them.  It 
would  seem,  then,  that  every  possible  consideration  of 
charity  and  self-interest  ought  to  induce  both  the  father’s 
relatives  and  those  of  his  deceased  wife  to  join  hands  in 
making  the  new  mistress  of  the  home  welcome,  cordially 
welcome ;  and  in  aiding  her  by  every  demonstration  of  good 
will  and  affection  to  be,  as  she  purposes,  a  loving  mother  to 
the  children  she  takes  to  her  heart  to  cherish  and  to  rear. 

Instead  of  doing  what  nature  and  common  sense  would 
point  out,  as  the  only  judicious  and  beneficial  course  to  fol¬ 
low,  motives  of  sordid  interest  upset  both  the  judgment  and 
the  conscience  even  among  good  Christian  folk.  Thus  a 
serious  responsibility  is  incurred  through  criminal  and  un¬ 
warrantable  meddlesomeness,  the  education  of  the  orphans 
and  the  happiness  of  their  home  are  forever  compromised. 


464 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


This,  however,  is  taking  things  at  their  worst.  For  the 
stepmother  herself  we  have  none  but  words  of  encourage¬ 
ment,  if  she  be  only  bent  on  doing  her  duty  thoroughly. 
She  must  make  her  husband  feel  that  she  has  most  truly 
adopted  his  children  as  her  own.  He  soon  discovers  whether 
her  love  is  a  true  one  or  not.  Nor  will  his  children  be  long 
in  finding  out  whether  or  not  the  heart  to  which  they  are 
pressed  beats  with  a  genuine  motherly  tenderness  for  them. 
The  eyes  of  children  are  very  wise.  They  look  into  yours 
with  a  penetrating  and  steadfast  gaze  which  is  like  the 
sounding-rod  dropped  down  into  the  dark,  deep  waters  and 
bringing  up  with  it  the  secrets  of  the  ocean-bed.  You  can¬ 
not  conceal  from  these  innocent  but  infallible  eyes  the  secret 
of  your  inmost  soul.  They  read  you  through  and  through 
in  a  marvelously  brief  space  of  time. 

BEGIN  BY  LOVING  YOUR  HUSBAND’S  CHILDREN  AS  YOUR 

OWN. 

This  is  God’ s  will  in  your  regard  ;  all  His  graces  will  aid 
you  toward  this  most  necessary  and  blissful  result.  Re¬ 
solve,  in  your  heart  of  hearts,  that  you  will  be  obedient  to 
Him  in  this,  and  devote  henceforward  your  whole  energy 
to  its  attainment.  Shall  we  recommend  one  practice  of  piety 
to  you,  and  beseech  you  to  be  earnest  and  faithful  in  its 
fulfillment  \  From  the  day  you  take  possession  of  your 
new  home  make  a  league  with  its  guardian  angels,  and  take 
them  as  your  helpers,  your  counselors,  companions,  and 
friends  in  the  difficult  task  of  discharging  your  motherly 
duties.  This  will  be  all  the  more  necessary  for  you,  if  you 
find  that  there  are  evil  influences  at  work  to  wean  your 
children’s  hearts  from  you.  Here  is  what  we  recommend 
in  imitation  of  that  wonderful  man,  the  Blessed  Peter  Favre, 
one  of  the  lights  of  the  16th  century,  whom  popes  and  saints 
revered  during  his  lifetime  as  a  man  filled  with  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

Whenever  he  spent  even  a  single  night  in  a  new  house, — • 
it  was  his  custom  on  crossing  the  threshold  silently  to  in- 


CONCLUSION. 


465 


yoke  the  assistance  of  the  angels  to  whose  care  it  was  com¬ 
mitted,  and,  on  being  shown  into  the  apartment  prepared 
for  himself,  he  would  close  the  door,  and  kneel  successively 
in  each  corner,  beseeching  the  Divine  Majesty  to  grant  him 
the  special  protection  of  the  spirits  of  light  and  to  drive 
away  the  spirits  of  darkness.  Then,  after  reciting  prayers 
to  the  guardian  angels,  he  would  sprinkle  holy  water  over 
the  room. 

This  is  not  superstition,  but  enlightened  Catholic  devo¬ 
tion.  For  the  more  we  study  divine  things,  the  more  light 
we  obtain  on  the  relations  between  this  outward  world  we 
see  and  touch  and  the  invisible  and  spiritual  world,  the 
more  does  the  presence  of  these  spirits,  good  and  evil,  be¬ 
come  an  ever-present  reality  to  us.  Like  Elisseus  and  his 
servant,  our  eyes  are  opened  to  see  the  earth  and  the  moun¬ 
tains  round  about  covered  with  horsemen  and  chariots  of 
fire,  God’s  faithful  host  sent  to  protect  those  who  do  his 
work,  and,  though  we  may  be  appalled  sometimes  by  the 
numbers  and  might  of  his  enemies,  we  shall  feel  like  the 
great  Hebrew  prophet  that  there  are  more  with  us  than 
against  us. 

You  are  a  Christian  woman  ; — you  must  be  a  supernatural 
woman.  You  will  have  evil  passions,  earthly  interests  and 
feelings,  and  the  malignant  influences  of  the  fallen  angels 
to  counteract ;  but  you  will  have  on  your  side  God  and  his 
angels  ; — you  will  have  the  love,  the  veneration,  the  un¬ 
bounded  confidence  of  your  husband.  You  will  also  have 
the  pure  and  devoted  love  of  his  children ;  for  true  love 
cannot  help  being  loved  in  return.  But  all  this  must  be 
the  result  of  your  own  supernatural  devotion  and  piety. 

CONCLUSION. 

And  so  we  are  still  before  the  Cheistian  Home, — with 
the  hosts  of  the  guardian  spirits  camped  round  about,  visi¬ 
ble  to  the  eye  of  our  soul,  like  the  lights  of  a  great  city 
seen  through  a  mist  from  an  overhanging  mountain.  Here 
are  mothers,  worthy  of  being  on  earth  the  living  images  of 
30 


466 


THE  MIRROR  OF  TRUE  WOMANHOOD. 


God’s  unsleeping  watchfulness  and  unfathomable  tender¬ 
ness  ;  daughters  formed  to  their  mother’s  perfect  likeness, 
all  innocence,  self-denial,  and  unsparing  devotion  to  the 
happiness  of  others  ;  sons  worthy  to  be  the  unselfish  ser¬ 
vants  of  such  mothers  and  such  sisters,  trained  to  be  the 
fearless  aud  spotless  knights  of  Truth  and  Justice  in  the 
evil  days,  and  the  promoters  of  all  true  liberty  and  progress 
in  the  peaceful  days, — at  all  times  the  true  sons  of  God ; 
the  vast  armies  of  the  daughters  of  toil,  each  bearing  on  her 
forehead  the  sign  of  Christ,  each  keeping  her  eyes  fixed  on 
Him  whose  whole  life  was  labor,  and  crucifixion,  and  a 
martyrdom  ; — and  above  all  this  vast  and  glorious  array, — 
the  Heavens  opened  as  in  the  vision  of  the  great  Patriarch, 
a  pathway,  like  a  far-stretching  flight  of  shining  steps  as¬ 
cending  from  earth  to  the  City  of  God  on  high,  the  wide 
gates  thrown  open,  angels  of  light  ever  moving  along  them 
in  their  brotherly  ministration,  and  the  Eternal  God  and 
Father  of  all  amid  the  myriads  of  angels  and  saints,  bend¬ 
ing  down  to  us  with  outstretched  arms  and  radiant  counte¬ 
nance, — while  these  words  fall  upon  our  ears  and  sink  into 
our  souls,  like  sounds  of  divinest  music  on  the  hushed 
waters : 

“  Blessed  are  the  Poor !  .  .  .  Blessed  are  the  meek  !  .  .  . 
Blessed  are  they  that  mourn !  .  .  .  Blessed  are  they 

that  hunger  and  thirst  after  justice  !  .  .  .  Blessed  are 

the  merciful !  .  .  .  Blessed  are  the  clean  of  heart !  .  .  . 
Blessed  are  the  peace-makers !  .  .  .  Blessed  are  they 

that  suffer  persecution  !  ...  Be  glad  and  rejoice,  for 

your  reward  is  very  great  in  Heaven  !  ”  .  .  . 


TRUE  MEN 


AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


A  Book  op  Instruction  for  Men  in  the  World. 


“Every  Boy  and  Youth  is,  in  his  mind  and  sentiments,  a  Knight,  and  essentially  a  Sou  of 
Chivalry.  Nature  is  fine  in  him.  Nothing  but  the  circumstance  of  a  most  singular  and 
unhappy  constitution,  and  the  most  perverted  and  degrading  system  of  education,  can  ever 
totally  destroy  the  action  of  this  general  law.”— Kenblm  Henry  Digby. 


Copyright, 

1878, 

By  Peter  F.  Collier. 


New  York:  J.  J.  Little  &  Co.,  Printers, 
10  to  20  Astor  Place. 


Wig  Imminence, 

JOHN,  CARDINAL  McCLOSKEY 

Archbishop  of  New  York, 

THIS  BOOK 

ON 

TRUE  MEN 

IS  HUMBLY  AND  AFFECTIONATELY 


BY 


THE  A  UTHOR 


.  I  *  '  •  /  "1  v  .  .■ 

■ 

-  . 

■  •  «  »,  !  .  & 


. 


,  *' 

. 


.  , 

. 


’ 


\  • 


r 

. 

. 

■ 1*3 


- 


. 

■  . 


!  '<  . 


" 


% 


. 


P 


ft 


Archbishoprick  of  New  York. 

218  Madison  Aye.,  New  York, 
*  -  Sept.  Gtli,  1878. 

Dear  Father  O’Reilly  , 

I  am  much  pleased  with  your  new  work  entitled  “  True  Men  as  We 
Need  Them.” 

It  is  full  of  instructive  lessons  and  wise  counsels  presented  in  an  attractive 
form  and  adapted  to  various  classes  of  men  as  we  find  them  around  us  in  the 
world. 

I  hope  it  will  receive  a  wide  circulation  and  be  productive  of  much  good. 
I  need  not  add  that  it  has  my  cordial  commendation. 

Please  accept  my  best  wishes  for  your  health  and  happiness,  and  believe 
me  to  remain, 

Very  sincerely  your  friend  and  servant, 

JOHN  CARD.  McCLOSKEY, 

Archbishop  of  New  York. 


Rev.  B.  O’REILLY. 


'  .  * 


■  - 

' 


. 

■ 

.  . 

\ 


■ 

- 


-• 


. 


*  \ 


' 


■ 

s  • 

> 

..  ■ 


•  \ 

- 


■ 

» 

- 


•"v  - 


\ 


•  • 


' 


\ 


THE  AUTHOR’S  PREFACE. 


The  hearty  welcome  given  by  the  public  to  the  Mirror 
of  True  Womanhood,  encourages  the  author  to  send  forth 
this  volume  as  a  companion  to  it.  The  same  plan,  so  far 
as  the  subject-matter  would  permit,  has  been  followed  in 
both. 

; 

Much  of  the  utility  as  well  as  of  the  success  of  the 
present  work  will  depend  on  those  who  have  so  generously 
patronized  its  predecessor, — the  True  Women  of  America. 
Coming  from  their  hand  to  husband,  son,  or  brother,  the 
book  will  prove  acceptable  and  most  precious.  Its  lessons 
too  must  derive  much  of  their  power  to  please  and  to  in¬ 
struct  from  the  eloquent  advocacy  of  the  wives  and  mothers 
to  whom  we  must  owe  the  true  men  of  the  future. 

Renewing  his  sincere  thanks  to  publisher,  printer,  and 
engraver,  for  their  zealous  and  kindly  cooperation,  the 
author  now  leaves  his  work  to  the  judgment  of  the  public, 
and  beseeches  on  its  readers  the  blessing  of  Him  who  is 
Himself  both  Very  God  and  True  Man, — the  ever-blessed 
Model  of  all  true  nobility  of  life. 

New  York,  8 th  September,  1878. 


.  . 

' 

A  •' 


,  A 

■  - 

. 


' 


1  • 


.  '  ‘  ’  . 

i 

■  -  '  . 


* 

‘  -  ••  ,  " 


p 

■ 


■ 

-  I 


. 


> 


*<• 


* 


k  ■ 


' 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


•  •  • 


Dedication  . 

• 

• 

PAGE 

.  iii 

Approbation 

• 

• 

.  v 

Author’s  Preface 

• 

• 

.  vii 

Chapter  I. 

Introductory  :  The  Ideal  of  True 
Manhood. 

The  Author’s  purpose, — to  inspire 
the  love  of  Excellence  .  .  1 

This  book  written  for  men  of  the 
world,  not  Priests,  or  Religious  2 
The  True  Man  understood  to  be 
the  True  Christian  .  .  .  8 

Models  of  Excellence  in  our  own 

times . 4 

Our  True  Man  should  be  a  man 
of  great  character  ...  5 

Character  illustrated  :  .  .  5 

From  Protestant  sources  .  .  6 

High  Honor  explained  from  Catho¬ 
lic  sources  ....  7 

The  Idea  of  Honor  as  conceived  by 
our  forefathers  ...  8 

Pagan  conception  of  honor  in 

youth . 9 

The  Old  Testament  conception  of  it  9-10 
St.  Louis,  King  of  France,  a  model 
of  great  character  .  .  11-12 

This  greatness  of  character  neces¬ 
sary  and  acceptable  to  the  pop¬ 
ular  masses  .  .  .  12-13 

Character  should  shine  forth  in 
conduct . 13 


PAGE 

All  the  forces  of  Nature  and  Grace 
given  to  man  for  active  work 
and  noble  work  .  .  .14 

Every  man  bound  to  cultivate  his 

own  soul . 14 

Put  your  whole  heart  in  your  work  15 
Create  your  own  opportunities  .  15 

Illustrations  .  .  .  .  1G 

Have  a  purpose  in  life  ...  16 

How  Education  should  prepare  for 
the  work  of  life  .  .  .17 

Mighty  forces  given  in  Grace  to 
aid  in  this  formation  .  17-18 

True  Men  in  our  day  should  be  of 
superior  excellence  .  .  .18 

The  Gentleman  and  the  “  Gen¬ 
teel  ”  man  ....  19 

Christian  Youth  must  be  God-fear¬ 
ing  and  Dutiful  ...  19 

Present  and  pressing  need  of  the 
High-minded  and  Dutiful  .  20-21 

Chapter  II. 

Ideal  of  the  True  Man's  Home.  .• 

The  obligation  “to  dress  and  to 
keep  ”  the  Paradise  of  the  Home, 
a  law  for  all  generations  .  .  22 

How  God  labors  to  prepare  Man’s 
Everlasting  Home  .  .  24-26 

Every  true  father  is  to  imitate  God 
in  creating  a  Home  ...  26 

Make  the  earthly  Home  like  the 
Heavenly . 27 


IX 


X 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Christian  Homes  the  great  need 

of  the  age . 28 

The  creation  of  the  Home  a  joint 
labor .  .*  .  .  .29 

Man  taught  this  joint  labor  by  the 

Birds . 29 

By  the  Bee  and  the  Ant  .  .  30 

Chapter  III. 

The  True  Man's  Home-Duties. 

Man’s  true  world  is  his  Home  .  31 

The  creative  forces  of  happiness  in 
the  Home  must  come  from  Con¬ 
jugal  Love  ....  32 

The  Husband’s  part,  a  chief  part 
in  creating  and  preserving  this 
blissfulness  ....  33 

“  The  undivided  love  of  a  true  Wo¬ 
man,”  the  other  creative  force  .  33 

The  treasure  such  a  love  is  .  .34 

Guilt  and  folly  of  npt  prizing  and 
cherishing  this  treasure  .  .  35 

Union  of  Hearts  all-powerful  for 
good  .  .  ...  36 

Man  responsible  for  this  union  and 
the  happiness  or  misery  of  his 
Home  ....  37-39 

His  care  of  his  treasure  and  his 
devotion  must  grow  from  day 
to  day  ..... 

The  husband’s  duty  to  a  wife 
found  to  be  inferior  in  culture  . 

Ilovv  a  noble  husband’s  generosity 
in  this  respect  was  rewarded  40-43 

Duty  to  a  weak  or  silly  wife  .  43 

How  a  foolish  choice  is  remedied  45 

How  a  wise  and  generous  husband, 
aided  by  his  mother,  transform¬ 
ed  a  weak  wife  .  .  47-52 

Duty  to  a  vicious  wife  .  .  52 

Infinite  prudence  and  generosity 

needed . 53 

Duty  toward  the  perverse  of  dis¬ 
position  . 55 

A  poor  shoemaker’s  exemplary 
patience  and  fortitude  .  57-59 


Chapter  IY. 

Paradise,  as  realized  in  the  Home  of  the 
True  Man. 

PAGE 

Social  importance  of  the  sanctities 
of  Home-life  ....  60 

Its  privacy  to  be  jealously  guarded  61 
The  soul  of  Home-life  is  hallowed 
love  .  .  .  .  .  62 

Wealth  of  true  love  in  Poor  Homes  63 
This  love  makes  Home  a  Heaven  64 
The  Eternal  Charity  in  Heaven 
the  model  of  conjugal  love  .  65 

Beautiful  Example  of  conjugal 
love  and  happiness  .  .  66-67 

Practical  conclusion  :  A  rich  wo- 

• 

manly  nature  can  only  be  devel¬ 
oped  by  the  constant  love  of  her 

husband . 79 

Love  killed  by  want  of  mutual  re¬ 
spect  . 80 

United  love  should  make  the  Home 
a  paradise  for  all  within  it  .  82 

Special  responsibility  of  the 

wealthy . 83 

Blissful  lot  of  a  wife  sustained  and 
encouraged  by  her  husband  .  83 

Appeal  to  all  to  aid  in  creating 
true  Christian  Homes  .  84-85 


Chapter  YI. 
Unhappiness. 

Chief  causes  of  unhappiness  in  the 
Home  : 


Chapter  Y. 

89  DarJc  Shadoics  from  the  Ruin:  and 

Light  from  the  Hearth. 

40  A  pause  by  the  roadside  to  consider 

sad  as  well  as  cheering  examples  86 
‘  ‘  Dark  Shadows  :  ”  The  Homeless 
Wanderer  .  .  .  .87 

Terrible  ending  of  a  wasted  life  .  89 

‘  ‘  Bright  Lights  :  ”  a  lost  Home 
nobly  reclaimed  .  .  91-95 

A  Swiss  orphan-boy  builds  up  a 
Home  for  his  adopted  parent .  95-104 
Exhortation  .  .  .  104-105 


CONTENTS. 


XI 


PAGE 

Irascibility  :  the  irritable  hus¬ 
band  ....  107-111 

A  great  life  marred  by  irri¬ 
tability  .  .  .  111-112 

The  fault-finding  husband  .  113 

The  moody  husband  .  .  115 

A  notable  example  of  moodi¬ 
ness  ....  117-122 

Chapter  VII. 

Home  Destroyers — ( Continued ). 

How  many  husbands  neglect  the 
Tree  of  Life  in  their  Home-gar¬ 
den.  and  eat  only  of  the  Tree  of 
Death  ....  123-124 

How  terrible,  when  death  claims 
the  soul,  to  see  ‘  ‘  what  we  might 
have  been  ”  and  “  what  we  have 
made  ourselves  ”...  125 

Man,  his  own  tempter,  seeking* 
happiness  outside  his  home  .  126 

A  frequentreause  for  so  doing  .  127 

A  notable  instance  of  generosity 
in  resisting  the  temptation,  and 
its  reward  .  .  .  128-131 

Men  who  will  not  drink  from 
their  Home-well  .  .  .  131 

Seductions  of  club-life,  and  what 
it  leads  to  ....  132 

A  young  mechanic  ruined  by  club- 

life  .  133-138 

The  evil-exampile  of  such  life 
spreading  from  the  upper  classes 
downward  ....  138 

Our  city  “cottages”  .  .  .  139 

Consequent  spread  of  corruption 
among  the  city  youth  of  both 
sexes  .....  140 
Where  shall  it  stop  ?  .  .  .  141 

Chapter  VIII. 

Bad  Husbands — ( Continued ). 

The  ambitious  husband  .  .143 

How  he  is  ensnared  .  .  .  144 

Retribution  sure  to  follow  guilt  .  147 

Instances  :  The  inventor  held  fast 
in  the  folds  of  the  serpent  .  147 


PAGE 

The  discarded  wife’s  prompt  cour¬ 
age,  and  her  unnatural  hus¬ 
band’s  sudden  downfall  .  148-152 

The'  contrast  :  True  companion¬ 
ship  of  more  than  sixty  years  of 
noble  labors  .  .  .  152-153 

The  secret  husband  .  .  .  154 

The  wife  should  be  her  husband’s 
confidante  and  counselor  ;  ex¬ 
amples  .....  154 

The  shiftless  husband  .  .  .  156 

Unmanly  husband  .  .  .  158 

Grasping  and  avaricious  husbands  159 
Meanness,  greed,  cruelty,  and  mis¬ 
ery  .....  162 

The  spendthrift  husband  .  .163 

Chapter  IX. 

The  Intemperate  Husband. 

Drunkenness  is  not  only  self-de- 
gradation  but  self-destruction  .  167 

It  sinks  the  man  below  the  beast  168 
The  animal  ever  true  to  its  natural 

instincts . 168 

How  some  “gentlemen”  tried  to 
bring  a  poor  brute  down  to  their 
level  ....  169-170 

The  Drunkard  and  the  Suicide  not 
to  be  treated  as  irresponsible  for 

their  acts . 170 

Every  rational  being  responsible 
for  his  first  sin,  and  for  con¬ 
tracting  the  habit  of  sin  .  .171 

Responsible  for  the  necessary  and 
foreseen  consequences  of  both 
sin  and  habit  .  .  .  .171 

Children  to  be  taught  this  doctrine 

carefully . 171 

“All  Wickedness  is  Weakness  ”  .  172 

Every  act  of  sin  an  act  of  wick¬ 
edness,  weakening  the  native 

power  of  the  will  .  .  .172 

Terrible  consequences  of  the  tyr¬ 
anny  of  Evil  Habit  .  .  .173 

Meaning  of  Edgar  Poe’s 
“Raven”.  .  .  .  v.  174 


Xll 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Sad  fate  of  young  wives  entrapped 
into  marriage  with  drunkards  .  175 

Men  too  apt  to  commiserate  the 
weakness  of  the  drunken  hus¬ 
band,  and  forget  the  hopeless 
misery  of  his  wife  .  .  176-177 

Drunkenness  one  of  the  worst 
forms  of  selfishness  .  .  .178 

The  Radical  Remedy  :  to  train 
the  young  to  the  abstinence  of 
the  Nazarites  and  llechabites  .  179 

Appeal  to  liquor-merchants  and 
tavern-keepers  .  .  .  179-181 

Chapter  X. 

The  Father. 

The  Father  in  the  Home  holds  the 
place  of  God  ....  182 

His  love  should  be  like  the  love  of 
God  : 

1.  All-embracing.  .  .  .  185 

Patient  and  merciful  to  all  .  186 

Beautiful  example  from  the 
life  of  the  Evangelist  St. 

John  .  .  .  .  187-189 

The  little  acts  of  hourly  love 
help  to  make  others  good 
and  keep  them  good  .  .  190 

2.  A  wise  love  : 

How  to  love  wisely  and  well  .  191 

Divine  wisdom  of  some 
parents  in  training,  prun¬ 
ing,  developing  their  young 
plants  .  .  .  .192 

Unwise  love  of  the  indulgent  192 
Example  of  Heroic  Wisdom 
in  a  Father,  resulting  in 
curing  a  family  vice  .  .  193 

Another  example  of  wise  love  195 
Sublime  example  of  the 
llechabites  .  .  .  195 

How  God  rewards  such  gen¬ 
erosity  ....  197 

3.  Liberality,  hospitality,  charity 

to  the  poor  .  .  .  .198 

Firm  and  authoritative  love  .  199 


PAGE 

Firmness  and  gentleness  ex¬ 
emplified  in  nature  .  .  200 

How  violence  paralyzes  the 
best  qualities  .  .  .  201 

Chapter  XI. 

The  Father’s  Supreme  Duty  : — to  male 
his  Home  a  School  of  Reverence. 

Reverence,  the  Grand  Feature  of 
Christian  Homes  .  .  .  203 

The  Divine  School  of  Reverence  at 

Nazareth . 204 

The  Reverence  practiced  there 
more  than  ever  necessary  : 

1.  Reverence  for  God  .  .  .  206 

2.  Reverence  for  Parental  Autho¬ 
rity  . 207 

3.  Reverence  for  Woman  :  .  .  208 

Reverence  for  the  Blessed 
Virgin  Mary  the  ideal  and 
model  of  Christian  rever¬ 
ence  for  all  women  .  .  208 

How  St.  Joseph  reverenced 
and  served  Mary  .  .  209 

His  example  imitated  in 
Catholic  families  .  .211 

This  Reverence  for  Woman  a 
want  of  our  age  .  .  213 

The  life  of  the  Holy  Family 
most  efficacious  as  a  model  213 
It  made  Mary  and  Joseph 
Christlike  ....  214 
Its  study  and  imitation  should 
make  us  Christlike  .  .  214 

Household  piety  of  Catholic  Na¬ 
tions  :  Spain  .  .  .  .215 

Custom  of  meditating  on  the  Life 
of  Christ ;  words  of  St.  Augustine  216 
Early  practice  of  the  Rosary  .  216 

How  this  study  of  Christ  begat 

Chivalry . 217 

How  it  generated  purity, the  bright¬ 
est  ornament  of  Knighthood  .  218 

Deep  significance  of  the  ancient 
“  Quest  of  the  Holy  Grail  ”  .  218 

This  Purity  fruitful  in  great  men 
and  women  ....  219 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Example  of  Spain  .  .  .  219 

The  Rural  Homes  of  Spain  .  .  220 

How  much  of  goodness  God  pre¬ 
serves  in  the  Home-life  of  Prot¬ 
estant  Countries  .  .  .  221 

National  Virtues  that  deserve  to 
be  cherished  .  .  .  222-223 

Chapter,  XII. 

Paternal  Authority  and  Home 
Education. 

Honor  and  love  for  the  Father  in 
Heaven,  the  ancient  and  peren¬ 
nial  spring  of  love  and  reverence 
for  the  earthly  Parent  .  .  224 

Paternal  Authority  derived  from 
God,  not  from  any  earthly  source  225 
The  right  to  educate  his  children 
indefeasible  in  the  Parent  .  227 
What  Education  in  general  is  .  229 

What  Home-education  is  .  .  230 

It  is  the  “casting  of  the  vase,” — 
the  giving  it  shape  and  form  .  231 

The  influence  of  the  Home  forms 
the  very  substance  of  the  soul  .  232 

Lasting  nature  of  early  impres¬ 
sions  . 233 

Special  Advice  to  Fathers  .  .  235 

How  to  guard  his  child’s  innocence  235 
No  vile  pictures  or  dangerous 

books . 236 

Mischief  done  in  Catholic  lands  by 

bad  books . 236 

French  Novels,  how  poisonous  .  237 

Guilt  incurred  in  circulating  them  237 
Danger  of  promiscuous  newspaper 

reading . 238 

Be  your  sons’  companion  .  .  239 

A  terrible  example  of  evil  com¬ 
panionship  .  .  .  240-243 

IIow  to  train  your  child’s  mind  .  244 

Grammar  School  Education  .  245 

Sacrifices  made  under  persecution 
to  secure  Catholic  education: 
admirable  zeal  shown  at  present 
to  prevent  antichristian  teach¬ 
ing  . 264 


Xlll 

PAGE 

This  conscientious  spirit  not  ag¬ 
gressive  . 247 

Education  a  joint  labor  of  Parent 
and  Teachers  ....  248 
Respect,  love,  sustain  your  chil¬ 
dren’s  Teachers  .  .  .  250 

The  Model  School  .  .  .  251 

Keep  your  children’s  hearts  fresh  252 

Chapter  XIII. 

Paternal  Authority  and  Public 
Education. 

How  much  of  generous  support 
should  be  given  to  our  Colleges  254 

The  divine  work  they  do  .  .  254 

Catholic  Ideal  of  Religious  Teach¬ 
ing  . 255 

Dr.  Arnold’s  way  of  teaching  .  256 

The  Presiding  Spirit  makes  the 

school . 258 

Have  none  but  the  Best  Teach¬ 
ers  !  . 259 

Give  Beginners  your  very  best  !  260 

Do  not  neglect  the  Slow  Many  for 
the  Clever  Few  !  .  .  .  261 

An  Enthusiastic  Teacher  makes 
enthusiastic  Scholars  .  .  262 

Instance  in  a  Great  American 

School . 263 

College  Education  intended  for 
Public  Men  ....  263 

It  should  be  complete  to  succeed 
in  its  aim  .  .  .  .  264 

Parents  not  educated  at  college  too 
apt  to  be  impatient  and  ruin 
everything  ....  264 

Scarcely  possible  to  determine  be¬ 

forehand  what  beginners  in  col¬ 
lege  may  be  ...  265 

Let  your  son  finish  his  course,  and 
then  choose  his  profession  .  266 

Keep  your  boys  from  evil  during 

vacations . 266 

Too  much  work  demanded  of  our 

Colleges . 267 

Folly  of  interrupting  a  college 
course . 268 


XIV 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Ingratitude  and  injustice  in  the 
case  of  certain  parents  .  .  269 

What  a  University  course  adds  to 
the  ordinary  College  course  .  270 

Example  from  Laval  University, 

Quebec . 271 

The  Thorough  Work  such  a  course 
fits  one  for  ....  272 
Prejudices  against  Latin  and  Greek  273 
They  have  never  been  Dead  Lan¬ 
guages,  in  the  strict  sense  :  Im¬ 
mortal  Languages,  rather  .  274 
Disuse  of  the  Latin  Tongue  the 
effect  of  Anti-Catholic  prejudice  275 
An  education  truly  Catholic  com¬ 
bines  the  knowledge  of  the  An¬ 
cient  and  the  Modern  .  .  276 

Standard  of  knowledge  for  the  ac¬ 
complished  Clergyman  .  .  277 

The  Ancient  Classics  studied 
chiefly  as  models  of  literary  ex¬ 
cellence  . 278 

Chapter  XIY. 

The  Second  Education. 

It  is  the  education  given  by  prac¬ 
tical  life  after  school  years  .  280 

The  Young  Man  has  to  learn  the 
science  of  living  with  others  .  281 

First,  he  must  learn  to  live  with 
his  own  family  ....  281 

All  your  accomplishments  are  for 
the  delight  of  the  Home-circle  .  281 
How  educated  sons  should  labor 
to  make  their  parents  happy  .  282 

What  is  due,  in  wealthy  families, 
to  the  parents’ patient  waiting  .  282 

The  Debt  of  Gratitude  due  to  Poor 

Parents . 283 

IIow  incomparably  sweet  is  the 
memory  of  a  good  mother’s 

Home . 283 

How  sweet  to  her  a  good  son’s 

gratitude . 284 

Loving  lo  “  come  back  to  the  Old 
Nest”  •  .  .  .  .  285 


PAGE 

How  monstrous  it  would  be  to  ne¬ 
glect  one’s  Parents  .  .  .  286 

Treasures  of  Brotherly  and  Sisterly 
love  to  be  cherished  .  .  .287 

Make  solid  Piety  the  solid  founda¬ 
tion  of  all  Home-virtue  and  pub¬ 
lic  virtue . 287 

The  Educated  Young  Man  bound 
to  be  “  God’s  Man  ”  .  .  .  288 

He  is  the  representative  of  his 
great  Mother,  the  Church  .  288 

The  spirit  of  true  piety,  is  all  joy¬ 
ousness  and  deep  contentment  .  289 

The  world  ever  beautiful  to  the 
beautiful  of  soul  .  .  .  290 

No  fault-finding  in  your  family 
circle . 290 


Be  all  reverence  to  your  mother, 
all  devotion  to  your  sistei’s,  all 


respect  for  every  woman  . 

.  291 

Be  all  truth  and  honor 

.  292 

Reverence  toward  one’s  self  . 

.  293 

God’s  honor  involved  in  ours 

.  294 

Example  .... 

.  294 

Chapter  XV. 

Boyhood. 

In  what  boys  differ  from  their  sis¬ 
ters  .....  296 
IIow  a  mother  can  do  her  work 
divinely  toward  her  boys  .  .  297 

The  ideal  parents  should  hold  up 
to  their  boys  ....  298 

In  what  a  boy  must  be  generous  .  299 

In  its  general  object,  duty  .  .  300 

The  glory  of  life  is  the  discharge 
of  duty.  ....  301 

The  sense  of  duty  in  boys  should 
be  what  instinct  is  to  the  bee  .  302 
Importance  of  developing  this 
sense  of  duty  ....  303 

Be  good  and  great  for  God’s  sake  304 
IIow  our  forefathers  tested  this 
love  of  duty  ....  305 

By  heroic  obedience  and  endur¬ 
ance  ....  306-308 

The  fruits  of  heroic  obedience  .  308 


CONTENTS. 


XV 


PAGE 

Be  generous  in  temperance  .  .  300 

Imitate  the  boy-king,  St.  Louis  .  310 

Dare  to  excel  in  whatever  you  do  311 
Excellence,  in  holiness  especially, 
pursued  in  all  ranks  and  occu¬ 
pations  by  true  Christians  .  312 

Why  St.  Louis  is  held  up  as 

model . 313 

Conclusion  :  How  a  boy  of  ten 
heroically  conquered  his  per¬ 
verse  temper  ....  314 

Chapter  XYI. 

Matrimony. 

Great  importance  of  this  chapter  320 
Christ’s  love  for  His  mother  and 
His  Church,  and  their  love  for 
Him,  the  ideal  of  all  wedded 
love  .....  *321 
The  sort  of  wife  a  man  should 
seek  .....  322 
The  purest  and  the  best  .  .  322 

Seek,  first,  the  beautiful  soul  .  324 

Be  slow  to  give  your  heart  away  .  326 

See  if  the  pure  and  good  come 
from  a  well-ordered  and  virtuous 

Home . 326 

Seek  sound  sense  and  one  capable 
of  governing  a  household  .  327 

Turn  away  from  falsehood  and  in¬ 
sincerity  . 327 

How  to  be  worthy  of  a  true  wo¬ 
man  .....  328 
How  to  prepare  for  matrimony  .  329 

Unspeakable  importance  of  this 
preparation  ....  330 

The  true  nuptial  service  of  the 
Church,  how  solemn  and  im¬ 
pressive  ....  330-331 

How  to  guard  and  increase  conju¬ 
gal  affection  ....  332 

Examples  .....  332 

Chapter  XYII. 

Obstacles  to  True  Manliness. 

I. 

The  Tyranny  of  Human  liespect  : 


PAGE 

How  degrading  is  the  fear  of 
other  people’s  opinion  of  us  .337 
Xoble  Examples  of  Moral  Cour¬ 
age  : . 339 

In  Schools  ....  340 
In  Tennyson’s  “Gareth  and 
Lynette  ”  .  .  .  .  342 

In  Men  of  the  World  .  .  344 

Sublime  expiation  for  a  mo- 
* 

mentary  and  secret  accep¬ 
tation  of  a  duel  .  .  .  346 

Chapter  XYIII. 

Obstacles  to  Manliness — ( Continued ). 

II. 

The  Seduction  of  Evil  Example  .  351 

Evil  example  acts  on  the  soul  like 
malaria  on  the  body  .  .  .351 

Universal  sway  of  Evil  Example  : 
Jeroboam,  perverted  in  Egypt, 
perverts  all  Israel  .  .  .  353 

Achab  ;  the  good  King  Joshaphat.  354 
Henry  YIII.,  and  Photius  .  .  355 

Louis  XI Y.,  and  Louis  XY.  .  355 

Evil  example  in  our  own  midst  : 
Corruption  in  the  Legislative 
Hall  ;  in  every  Public  Office  ; 
dishonesty  in  every  position  of 

trust . 356 

This  dishonesty  made  familiar  to 
the  young  ;  not  reprobated  in 

society . 358 

Consequent  Debasement  of  Public 
Character . 358 

The  Remedy. 

The  counteracting  power  of  Good 

Example . 360 

Instances . 361 

Power  of  paternal  and  ancestral 
example  in  the  Home  .  .  362 

now  the  Catholic  Men  of  France 
counteract  the  scandals  of  Skep¬ 
ticism  and  Infidelity  .  .  363 

How  a  Noble  Friend  gave  his  life 
for  his  friend’s  soul  .  .  .  365 

What  charity  can  do  .  .  .  367 


CONTENTS. 


xvi 


PAGE 

Noble  Mission  intrusted  to  Men  of 
the  World  ....  368 

Chapter  XIX. 

The  Professional  Man. 

I. 

The  Lawyer.  Origin  and  author¬ 
ity  of  Law  ....  371 

Solicitude  of  the  Church  for  the 
science  and  purity  of  the  Law¬ 
yer  . 372 

Early  legal  precautions  against 

abuses . 373 

Present  need  of  a  thorough  legal 

training . 374 

Catholic  Law-Schools  in  America  374 
The  Lawyer’s  Ideal  .  .  .  375 

Interests  intrusted  to  Lawyers  .  379 

The  true  Jurist  must  be  a  super¬ 
natural  man  ....  378 

'How  St.  Louis  provided  for  the 
pure  administration  of  the  Law  381 
The  men  who  dishonor  the  Profes¬ 
sion  . 382 

The  true  exemplar  of  the  Christian 

J  urist . 383 

The  Judiciary  :  Abuses  that  dis¬ 
grace  our  Courts  of  Law  .  .  386 

A  noble  Family  of  Lawyers  .  .  389 

II. 

The  Physician  ....  391 

Ancient  honor  of  the  Profession  .  391 

Love  of  the  Church  for  it  .  .  392 

Models  and  Patrons  :  St.  Raphael ; 

Saints  Cosmas  and  Damian  .  393 

Christian  Generosity  of  Modern 
Physicians  ....  394 
Physician  and  Lawyer  aiding  the 

Priest . 396 

Heroism  of  Physicians  in  the  Val¬ 
ley  of  the  Mississippi  .  .  397 

Need,  in  the  Physician,  of  thorough 
skill  and  thorough  conscientious¬ 
ness  .....  398 

Fearful  Consequences  of  one  man’s 
intemperance  ....  398 


Only  a  rare  exception  to  Profes¬ 
sional  trustworthiness 

Chapter  XX.  V 

The  Statesman. 

Distinction  between  the  Politician 
and  the  Statesman  . 

Thorough  training  necessary  to  the 
Statesman  .... 
Conception  the  Statesman  should 
have  of  his  service  . 

He  must  look  higher  than  the  State 
or  his  constituents  for  his  Mas¬ 
ter  and  his  Reward  . 

This  Magnanimity  a  preservative 
against  Ambition  and  Time¬ 
serving  . 

Glorious  Singularity  of  true  States¬ 
manship  . 

Its  Fruits  and  Fame  imperishable 
What  is  expected  from  the  true 
Statesman  .... 

Chapter  XXI. 

The  Toilers  of  the  Pen. 
Mind,  the  Master  of  the  World  . 
High  Mission  of  Men  of  Letters  . 
They  are  the  Sowers  of  God’s 

Truth . 

A  Noble  Literary  Toiler  described 
by  Charles  Dickens  . 
Theological  Writers  :  a  magnifi¬ 
cent  procession  of  Godlike  men 
Warnings  to  Religious  Writers  . 
How  Supernaturally  the  light  and 
fire  with  which  they  glow,  were 

obtained . 

Philosophical  and  Scientific  Writ¬ 
ers  :  True  Philosophy  borrows 
its  steady  light  from  Religion  ; 
and  True  Science  from  Christian 
Philosophy  .... 

How  Unphilosophical  it  is  to  base 
any  positive  teaching  on  mere 
hypotheses  .... 

How  Unscientific,  to  make  one’s 
inductions  broader  than  the  ex- 


PAGE 

400 

401 

402 

404 

405 

407 

409 

411 

412 

416 

416 

417 

418 

421 

422 

423 

425 

427 


CONTENTS. 


XYll 


TAGE 

periments  made  or  the  facts  ob¬ 
served  . 428 

The  Journalist. 

How  Important  and  Noble  his  Mis¬ 
sion  ...... 

The  legitimate  uses,  and  the  per¬ 
nicious  abuses  of  secular  jour¬ 
nalism  . 

What  the  conscientious  jour¬ 
nalist  would  keep  from  his 
wife  and  children 
Keep  crime  out  of  sight 
Purify  and  elevate  the  drama 
Treat  religion  reverently 
The  heroes  you  may  deify 
Religious  journalists  : 

Difficulty  of  their  task,  *  and 
how  ill  requited. 

Necessity  of  united  action 
Charity  their  indestructible 
bond . 

Chapter  XXII. 

The  Business  31 an. 

The  power  for  good  wealth  be¬ 
stows  .....  442 
The  foundation  of  nobleness  of 


life  is  purity  of  intention — God 
sought,  served,  glorified  .’ 

Illustrations  of  the  author’s  mean¬ 
ing  . 

Conscience  should  be  the  soul  of 
all  business  .... 

Its  need  at  present 

How  ancient  Catholic  countries 
hallowed  and  honored  business 

Review  by  the  light  of  Conscience 
your  transactions  of  each  day  . 

Blessed  effects  of  this  review  fore¬ 
shadowed  .  .  .  . 

Business  men,  God’s  stewards 

A  beautiful  example 

Chapter  XXIII. 

The  Laboring  Man. 

Reserved  to  the  last  place,  because 
the  dearest  of  all 

What  Christ  is  to  the  laboring 
man  .  .  .  .  . 

How  the  laborer  is  honored  by 
the  Church  .... 

The  army  of  canonized  laborers  . 

The  nobility  of  soul  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  laborer  .... 

Appeal  to  laborers 


430 


431 


432 

433 

434 
43  G 
437 


439 

440 

441 


PAGE 

443 

444 

446 

44G 

449 

450 

451 

452 

453 

454 

455 

456 

457 

458 

459 


i 


True  Men  as  We  Need  Them. 


* 


CHAPTER  I. 

IXTK0DUCT0EY. 

The  Ideal  of  Manhood. 

11  The  age  of  chivalry  is  gone  !  ”  calmly  observe  the  calculating  sophists,  who 
lead  the  mind  of  the  moderns,  and  persuade  them  that  the  world  is  hastening, 
under  their  influence,  to  a  period  of  increased  light  and  civilization, — a  most 
convenient  maxim  to  establish  from  the  declamation  of  an  orator  !  For  that  is 
as  much  as  to  hold,  that  there  is  no  longer  occasion  for  men  to  be  generous 
and  devoted,  faithful  and  indifferent  to  their  own  selfish  interest,  full  of  high 
honor,  not  aiming  to  follow  the  erring  multitude,  but  emulous  of  imitating  the 
example  and  of  joining  the  society  of  the  celestial  citizens  :  an  assertion  .  .  . 
characteristic  of  a  class  of  men  .  .  .  with  whom  every  age  is  gone  but  that  of 
economists  and  calculators. — Kenelm  Henry  Digby. 

That  this  book  will  be  read  by  young  men  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  our  land  is  a  hope  which  its 
author  must  cherish  fondly.  For  many  years  of  his  life  he 
has  labored  in  educating  the  youth  of  America  ;  he  would 
fain  devote  its  crowning  work  to  repair  the  errors  committed 
in  this  apostleship  of  education.  A  long  and  comforting- 
experience  has  also  taught  him  how  much  there  is  in  the 
hearts  of  American  youth  as  well  as  in  those  of  its  ripest 
manhood,  of  most  precious  resources  for  the  prosperity  of 
their  common  country  and  the  honor  of  their  ancestral 
faith  :  how,  then,  can  he  help  being  encouraged  and  thrilled 
by  the  thought  of  aiding,  in  his  measure,  toward  forming 
1  1 


2 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


for  the  coming  age  the  chivalrous  patriots  and  the  chival¬ 
rous  Christians  who  are  to  enlighten  and  to  save  the  world  ? 

He  would,  then,  ask  every  noble-hearted  boy  and  every 
high-souled  man  who  reads  this  page,  to  trust  himself  in 
the  perusal  of  these  chapters  to  the  guidance  of  one  who,  in 
leading  them  through  the  ancient  paths  and  placing  the 
while  before  their  eyes  the  illustrious  examples  of  modern 
.  excellence,  aims  only  at  tiring  their  souls  with  a  holy  am¬ 
bition  and  an  emulation  fruitful  in  great  deeds. 

It  is,  in  very  truth,  the  love  of  excellence  in  all  that  can 
elevate  man,  perfect  all  the  attributes  of  true  manhood,  and 
thereby  increase  a  hundred -fold  his  power  for  good,  that  is 
inculcated  throughout  this  book.  Hot, — and  we  hasten  to 
affirm  it  at  the  very  outset, — is  the  ideal  which  is  here  held 
up  for  the  imitation  of  both  young  and  old,  anything  like 
the  high  standard  of  moral  perfection,  according  to  which 
the  Christian  Church  for  nineteen  centuries  has  been  wont 
to  judge  the  virtues  of  those  we  call  Saints. 

Who  are  the  True  Men  described  here  f 

We  are  writing  for  men  of  the  world,  not  for  the  apostolic 
men  who  have  to  keep  alive  and  spread  the  Christian  faith 
by  their  ministrations  and  example,  nor  for  those  who 
seclude  themselves  from  the  world  to  become  Cliristlike  by 
the  practice  of  self-denial  and  self-sacrifice.  Our  instruc¬ 
tions  are  intended  to  benefit  laymen  of  all  classes,  as  dis¬ 
tinguished  from  the  priest,  the  monk,  or  the  hermit. 
Hot  that  the  manly  virtues  here  inculcated  and  illustrated 
are  not  necessary  to  all  those  who  believe  in  the  dread 
responsibilities  of  human  conduct  and  expect  an  eternal 
reward  for  the  excellence  required  of  all  God’s  servants, — 
but  that  the  perfection  demanded  of  religious  orders  and 
the  consecrated  ministers  of  God’s  word,  is  higher  in  degree 
and  differs  in  kind,  in  many  respects,  while  the  sterling 
qualities  of  heart  and  sonl  demanded  of  true  men  of  the 
world  are  to  be  measured  by  the  peculiar  duties  and  exi¬ 
gencies  of  their  worldly  position. 


THE  TRUE  CHRISTIAN ,  THE  TRUE  MAN. 


3 


Moreover,  the  True  Men  whom  we  have  here  before  our 
mind’s  eye, — and  we  have  been  blessed  by  acquaintance 
with  many  such, — combine  in  their  lives  so  many  heroic 
and  Godlike  features,  that,  although  living  in  the  turmoil 
of  wordly  affairs,  they  would  be  hailed  as  Saints  by  the 
holiest  of  priests  or  the  most  unworldly  of  ascetics. 

The  True  Christian ,  the  True  Man. 

Our  True  Men,  to  be  sure,  we  conceive  to  be,  before  and 
above  all  else,  true  Christians,  sincere  believers  in  Christ, 
and  his  earnest  and  devoted  followers  ;  men  having  at 
heart  to  practice  the  divine  precepts  for  the  love  of  their 
Divine  Author,  and  the  sake  of  the  excellence  such  practice 
begets,  much  more  even  than  for  the  honor  such  fidelity 
may  win  them  ;  men  true  to  God,  to  his  truth,  to  them¬ 
selves  and  their  conscience,  in  every  age  of  life,  in  every 
walk  and  rank  of  society,  in  every  calling  and  trust,  under 
every  difficulty  and  trial  and  temptation. 

It  were,  at  best,  ill  taste  and  worse  policy,  in  beginning  a 
book  of  instruction,  addressed  to  the  men  of  our  own  time, 
to  hint  at  present  degeneracy,  or  to  allow  it  to  be  thought 
of  the  model  character  we  would  hold  up  for  admiration — 

“  Such  a  man 

Might  be  a  copy  to  these  younger  times, 

Which,  followed  well,  would  demonstrate  them  now! 

But  goers  backward.”  * 

It  shall  be  seen,  before  we  have  got  through  many  chap¬ 
ters  together,  that,  however  we  may  deplore  the  spread  of 
unbelief  and  scientific  materialism  in  the  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury,  it  is,  nevertheless,  most  fruitful  in  the  purest,  the 
noblest,  the  best  forms  of  heroic  manhood,  and  even  of 
Christian  saintliness. 

Comparisons  of  our  own  age,  its  institutions,  tendencies, 
morals,  and  manners,  with  the  past,  could,  just  at  present, 
only  distract  the  mind  from  our  real  purpose.  We  have 


*  “  All’s  Well  that  Ends  Well,”  act  i.,  scene  ii. 


4 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


need  only  of  all  the  inherited  wealth  of  light  and  gracious 
helps  which  His  fatherly  providence  has  garnered  for  us, 
who  is  the  Creator,  the  Governor,  and  ever-present  Guide 
of  humanity.  Let  ns  only  look  around  us,  count  the  mag¬ 
nificent  advantages  of  our  position  on  this  point  of  time  and 
space,  and  heartily  endeavor  to  be  true  to  ourselves,  as  He 
who  is  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and  the  Life,  wills  us  to  be, 
and  we  shall  not  fail  to  be  the  True  Men,  whose  deeds  and 
achievements  shall  surely  glorify  our  Father  in  heaven  as 
well  as  our  earthly  country. 

“  This  above  all, — To  thine  own  self  be  true  ; 

And  it  must  follow,  as  the  night  the  day, 

Thou  canst  not  then  be  false  to  any  man.  ”  * 

Excellences  found  in  the  Men  of  Our  Bay. 

Our  true  self,  then,  is  what  we  are  in  God’s  mind,  what 
he  wishes  us  to  be  in  our  day  and  generation,  so  as  most  to 
benefit  the  world  amid  which  his  design  hath  placed  us. 
Let  each  man  of  us  learn  to  be,  and  set  himself  manfully  to 
be  an 

“  Active  doer,  noble  liver, 

Strong  to  labor,  sure  to  conquer,”  f 

and  we  shall  not  only  fill  our  place  well  in  Church  and 
State,  but  help  to  our  utmost  to  make  the  present  age  hold 
a  glorious  place  in  the  annals  of  the  world. 

Ho — the  age  of  chivalry  has  not  so  utterly  passed  away, 
but  that  the  spirit  which  animated  the  knightly  institutions 
of  old,  still  remains  to  inspire  lofty  aims,  sentiments  of  the 
most  exalted  and  self-denying  generosity,  and  deeds  of 
chivalrous  daring  and  heroic  self-sacrifice,  as  worthy  of 
eternal  remembrance  as  those  that  ever  graced  the  lives  of 
a  Godfrey,  a  Tancred,  or  a  St.  Louis. 

All  this  shall  be  made  evident  as  we  proceed.  Mean¬ 
while,  however,  lest  our  young  readers  should  be  led  to 
think  that  we  are  going  to  propose  for  their  imitation  an 


*  Sbakspeare. 


f  Robert  Browning. 


EXCELLENCE  IN  CHARACTER  AND  CONDUCT. 


5 


excellence  of  impossible  attainment,  or  virtues  too  far  above 
the  paths  in  which  they  must  needs  walk  through  life,  we 
hasten  to  fix  their  attention  on  the  twofold  excellence  of 
character  and  conduct,  which  is  accessible  to  every  man, 
from  the  peasant  to  the  prince,  from  the  boy  just  entering 
his  teens  to  the  octogenarian,  from  the  general  at  the  head 
of  his  army  to  the  lowliest  of  those  in  the  ranks  ; — accessible 
alike  to  the  day-laborer,  the  tradesman,  the  lawyer,  the 
magistrate,  the  physician  of  souls,  as  well  as  the  physician 
of  the  body, — to  the  man  most  eminent  in  letters  and 
science  as  well  as  to  the  man  who  is  ignorant  of  the  first  ele¬ 
ments  of  book  knowledge. 

Our  True  Man  should  be  a  Man  of  Great  Character. 

As  we  are  merely  foreshadowing  in  this  first  chapter  the 
most  important  features  of  onr  work,  it  may  suffice  to  point 
out  here  the  importance  of  character  in  itself  and  apart 
from  conduct,  and  the  vital  necessity  for  parents  of  culti¬ 
vating,  developing,  and  molding  strongly  the  character  of 
their  children  from  the  very  dawn  of  reason. 

By  character  here  we  mean  the  firm  habitual  disposition 
to  truthfulness,  honor,  integrity,  generosity,  and  resolute 
energy  of  purpose,  without  which  no  man  ever  was  or  ever 
can  be  a  true  man.  These  qualities  are  formed  in  the 
child  by  the  teaching  and  still  more  by  the  example  of  his 
parents. 

Examples  may  best  illustrate  and  impress  our  meaning 
on  the  willing  mind. 

Of  a  man  who  died  in  1817,  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight,  and 
whose  memory  must  ever  be  dear  to  Irish  Catholics — Fran¬ 
cis  Horner — it  was  said  by  a  contemporary  that  the  Ten 
Commandments  were  stamped  upon  his  countenance.  “The 
valuable  and  peculiar  light  ” — adds  another  of  his  country¬ 
men— “in  which  his  history  is  calculated  to  inspire  every 
right-minded  youth,  is  this.  He  died  .  .  .  possessed  of 
greater  public  influence  than  any  other  man  ;  and  admired, 
beloved,  trusted,  and  deplored  by  all,  except  the  heartless 


6 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


or  the  base.  No  greater  homage  was  ever  paid  in  Parlia¬ 
ment  to  any  deceased  member.  Now  let  every  young  man 
ask,  how  was  this  attained.  By  rank  ?  He  was  the  son  of 
an  Edinburgh  merchant.  By  wealth  ?  Neither  he,  nor  any 
of  his  relations,  ever  had  a  superfluous  sixpence.  .  .  .  By 
talents  ?  His  were  not  splendid,  and  he  had  no  genius. 
Cautious  and  slow,  his  only  ambition  was  to  be  right.  .  .  . 
By  what  then  was  it  ?  Merely  by  sense,  industry,  good 
principles,  and  a  good  heart,  qualities  which  no  well-con¬ 
stituted  mind  need  ever  despair  of  attaining.  It  was  the 
force  of  his  character  that  raised  him  ;  and  this  character 
not  impressed  upon  him  by  nature,  but  formed  out  of  no 
peculiarly  fine  elements  by  himself.”  * 

The  same  author  (Smiles)  goes  on  to  say:  u Truthful¬ 
ness,  integrity,  and  goodness — qualities  that  hang  not  on 
any  man’s  breath — form  the  essence  of  manly  character,  or, 
as  one  of  our  old  writers  has  it,  that  inbred  loyalty  unto 
Virtue  which  can  serve  her  without  a  livery.  He  is  strong 
to  do  good,  strong  to  resist  evil,  and  strong  to  bear  up  under 
difficulty  and  misfortune.” 

“It  was  a  first  command  and  counsel  of  my  earliest 
youth,” — says  Lord  Erskine, • — “always  to  do  what  my 
conscience  told  me  to  be  a  duty,  and  to  leave  the  conse¬ 
quence  to  God.  I  shall  carry  with  me  the  memory,  and  I 
trust  the  practice,  of  this  parental  lesson  to  the  grave.  I 
have  hitherto  followed  it,  and  I  have  no  reason  to  complain 
that  my  obedience  to  it  has  been  a  temporal  sacrifice.  I 
have  found  it,  on  the  contrary,  the  road  to  prosperity  and 
wealth  ;  and  I  shall  point  out  the  same  road  to  my  children 
for  their  pursuit.” 

These  examples  from  a  Protestant  source  we  have  pur¬ 
posely  placed  first  in  order,  that  our  Catholic  readers  may 
learn  how  carefully  Providence  preserves  even  in  the  lands 
which  reject  the  authority  of  His  Church,  the  precious 
home-virtues  without  which  there  can  be  neither  true  pri¬ 
vate  worth  nor  lasting  public  prosperity.  More  than  that, 
we  are  not  to  forget  that  civilized  pagan  nations,  living 


*  Lord  Cockburn,  as  quoted  by  Samuel  Smiles  in  “  Self-Help,”  pp.  332,  333. 


THE  HIGH  SENTIMENT  OF  HONOR. 


7 


under  the  Law  of  Nature,  have  always  shown  the  same  ap¬ 
preciation  of  noble  manly  character.  All  this  should  only 
shame  Catholics,  who  boast  the  possession  of  the  fullness  of 
Revealed  Truth,  into  the  formation  in  their  children  and  in 
themselves,  of  such  perfect  manly  characters,  as  befit  those 
who  are,  by  their  birthright,  God’s  adopted  children  here 
below. 

The  High  Sentiment  of  Honor. 

“With  our  ancestors,” — says  Digby, — “the  Catholic 
religion  was  still  the  base,  the  pervading  spirit,  the  vital 
principle  of  every  virtue.  From  it  flowed  the  high  senti¬ 
ment  of  honor,  the  fervor  of  heroism,  the  contempt  for 
riches,  the  zeal  of  loyalty,  the  constancy  of  friendship.” 
And,  speaking  of  honor,  the  bright  crown  of  all  manly 
character,  the  poet  does  but  express  the  unanimous  senti¬ 
ment  of  all  preceding  Catholic  generations,  when  he  puts 
the  following  words  into  the  mouth  of  a  Duke  of  Norfolk  : 

“  My  dear,  dear  lord, 

Tlie  purest  treasure  mortal  times  afford 
Is — spotless  reputation  ; — that  away. 

Men  are  but  gilded  loam,  or  painted  clay. 

A  jewel  in  a  ten -times  barred -up  chest 
Is  a  bold  spirit  in  a  loyal  breast. 

Mine  honor  is  my  life  ;  both  grow  in  one  ; 

Take  honor  from. me,  and  my  life  is  done/’  * 

Nor  must  what  is  here  called  honor  be  confounded  with 
mere  fame ;  there  were  and  there  are  still  many  of  the  no¬ 
blest  souls,  who  are  as  careless  of  what  men  may  think  of 
them  as  they  are  jealous  of  the  testimony  of  their  own  con¬ 
science  and  supremely  anxious  to  stand  well  in  the  secret 
judgment  of  the  All-Seeing. 

“There  is  nothing  that  cannot  be  endured,  save  dis¬ 
honor,”  says  the  great  St.  Martin  in  the  fourth  century; 
“observe  therefore  your  own  actions,  and  do  not  be  careless 
about  them  because  they  are  hidden  from  the  public  eye : 
for  it  mattereth  but  little  that  none  behold  them,  since  you 


*  King  Richard  II.,  act  i.,  scene  i.;  as  quoted  in  “Orlandus.” 


8 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


are  a  witness  to  them  yourself.  ...  It  is  the  precious  qual¬ 
ity  of  a  great  soul,  not  to  be  vacillating,  but  ever  consis¬ 
tent  with  one’s  self,  and  fearlessly  hopeful  of  the  end  of 
life.”  * 

The  Catholic  Idea  of  Honor. 

The  conception  of  honor  with  our  forefathers  was,  there¬ 
fore,  what  it  should  ever  be  with  their  descendants, — spot¬ 
less  integrity  in  the  sight  of  God,  much  more  even  than  an 
unstained  reputation  in  the  judgment  of  the  world.  The 
former  is  the  sure  foundation  of  the  latter  ; — and  it  is  chiefly 
about  it  that  every  true  man  should  be  concerned.  If  we 
are  without  reproach  before  our  own  conscience  and  in 
presence  of  God,  there  can  be  but  little  fear  for  our  good 
name  among  men.  W ould  that  the  men  of  our  day  could  * 
lay  this  truth  to  heart  and  impress  it  deeply  on  the  souls  of 
the  succeeding  generation !  Then  indeed  might  we  hope, 
in  this  land  of  unbounded  liberty  for  all  good,  the  return 
of  that  age  mentioned  by  the  great  Roman  orator,  ‘  ‘  when 
men  had  for  moral  safeguard,  not  the  boasting  voice  of  the 
people,  but  elevation  of  character  and  spotlessness  of  con¬ 
duct.”  f 

Supreme  and  loving  reverence  for  the  Divine  Majesty, 
and  the  filial  fear  of  rendering  one’s  self  displeasing  to  Him 
who  is  most  faithful  and  true,  such  is  the  habitual  sense  in 
the  Christian  soul  that  helps  to  keep  it  free  from  every  secret 
stain.  It  is  u the  fear  of  the  Lord”  under  another  name. 
And  where  it  possesses  thoroughly  the  heart  of  man,  it  is 
impossible  that' it  should  not  preserve  his  outward  life  from 
voluntary  stain.  The  purity  and  hardness  of  the  diamond 
belong  to  the  very  first  particles  which  unite  at  its  heart’s 
core  ;  the  others  which  the  mysterious  laws  of  the  Creator 
attract  around  these  to  increase  and  perfect  the  beauteous 
crystalline  mass,  must  needs  share  the  qualities  of  the 

*  Serm.  I. 

f  Pro  A.  Cluentio,  35.  Cum  homines  se  non  jactatione  populari,  sed  dignitate 
atque  innocentia  tuebantur ;  words  that  should  be  written  in  letters  of  gold  in 
every  place  where  laws  are  either  made  or  administered. 


HONOR,  THE  HEART’ S-CORE  OF  CHARACTER. 


9 


former.  The  light  which  fills  it,  the  perfect  purity  which 
gives  even  that  light  its  highest  value,  belonged  to  the  very 
heart  of  the  gem.  The  most  beautiful,  the  most  manly, 
the  most  heroic  characters  in  the  esteem  of  a  rightly  judging 
world,  are  men  whose  hearts  have  never  lost  their  primal 
purity,  souls  in  whose  very  center  the  fire  of  God’s  love 
lives  unquenchably,  and  wdiose  lives  shine  with  undimmed 
and  surpassing  splendor,  only  because  from  childhood  to 
the  grave  they  “walked  by  His  light  in  darkness.”  * 

Pagan  Conception  of  Honorable  Youth. 

“Young  people,”  says  Aristotle,  “are  not  of  corrupt 
manners,  but  are  innocent  from  not  having  beheld  much 
wickedness  ;  and  they  are  credulous  from  having  been  sel¬ 
dom  deceived.  .  .  .  And  they  are  easily  put  to  shame,  for 
they  have  no  resources  to  set  aside  the  precepts  which  they 
have  learned ;  and  they  have  lofty  souls,  for  they  have  never 
been  disgraced  or  brought  low.  .  .  .  They  prefer  honor 
to  advantage,  virtue  to  expediency,  for  they  live  by  affec¬ 
tion  rather  than  by  reason  ;  and  reason  is  concerned  with 
expediency,  but  affection  with  honor.  .  .  .  They  are  full  of 
mercy,  because  they  regard  all  men  as  good,  and  as  more 
virtuous  than  they  are  themselves, — for  they  measure  others 
by  their  own  innocence  ;  so  that  they  suppose  every  man 
suffers  wrongful]  y .  ’  ’ 

Conception  of  it  from  the  Old  Testament. 

See  how  that  most  beautiful  adamantine  quality,  formed 
in  infancy  and  childhood  by  the  joint  action  of  the  Divine 
Spirit  and  of  motherly  training,  shines  with  unremitting 
luster  in  Samuel,  perhaps  the  most  perfect  character  in  the 
Old  Testament.  True,  his  saintly  mother,  under  divine 
guidance,  had  led  the  life  of  a  Yazarite ;  nothing  that  could 
intoxicate  passed  her  lips,  and  these  lips  were  skilled  in 
prayer.  This  was  her  chief  delight.  And  this  twofold 


*  Job,  xxix.  3. 


10 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


spirit  of  prayer  and  heroic  abstinence  did  she  communi¬ 
cate  to  her  God-given  boy. 

He  was  a  life-long  Nazarite,  vowed  to  abstinence  and  con¬ 
secrated  to  the  divine  service  before  his  birth.  A  twofold 
passion  swayed  his  entire  existence, — absolute  fidelity  to 
the  God  of  his  fathers,  and  ardent  devotion  to  the  freedom 
and  moral  greatness  of  Israel.  With  his  mother’s  milk  he 
drank  in  that  absorbing  love  of  the  Divine  Majesty  which 
was  the  very  soul  of  his  life  ;  the  awful  presence  became 
from  infancy  to  him  a  familiar  reality,  illuminating  his 
whole  career,  like  a  sun  that  never  sets.  Toward  the 
scarcely  veiled  face  of  the  Lord  the  eye  of  Samuel, — child 
and  youth,  in  obscure  manhood  and  glorious  old  age, — was 
ever  turned  night  and  day ;  he,  too,  walked  before  God  and 
was  perfect. 

These  were  the  features  of  the  child’s  character,  when 
his  pious  mother  brought  him  to  the  Sanctuary  at  Shiloh, 
clothed  in  the  long  white  linen  robe  her  own  hands  had 
woven  for  him.  And  when,  yearly,  she  wove  and  brought 
him  another,  the  beautiful  spiritual  and  manly  character 
that  unfolded  itself,  seemed  as  much  the  result  of  her  pious 
nurture,  as  the  robe  which  fitted  his  increasing  stature  was 
the  loving  work  of  her  motherly  hands. 

Samuel, — child,  prophet,  liberator,  judge  of  Israel,  guide 
and  intercessor  of  his  people  and  their  rulers, — offers,  from 
first  to  last,  a  model  of  simple  unwavering  fidelity  to  God, 
to  his  own  people,  to  conscience,  and  to  honor. 

Hearken  to  the  touching  dialogue  that  took  place,  when 
this  model  magistrate  gave  over,  in  presence  of  the  assem¬ 
bled  nation,  his  political  authority  into  the  hand  of  their 
chosen  king. 

“  Samuel  said  to  all  Israel :  .  .  .  I  am  old  and  gray-head¬ 
ed  ;  .  .  .  having  then  conversed  with  you  from  my  youth 
until  this  day,  behold,  here  I  am.  Speak  of  me  before 
the  Lord  and  before  his  anointed,  whether  I  have  taken  any 
man’ s  ox  or  ass,  if  I  have  wronged  any  man,  if  I  have  op¬ 
pressed  any  man,  if  I  have  taken  a  bribe  at  any  man’s  hand  : 
and  I  will  despise  it  this  day,  and  will  restore  it  to  you.” 


ST.  LOUIS,  A  MODEL  OF  GREAT  CHARACTER.  H 

“And  they  said  :  Thou  hast  not  wronged  us,  nor  oppressed 
us,  nor  taken  aught  at  any  man’s  hand.”  * 

Modern  Examples :  SI.  Louis ,  King  of  France. 

From  the  spectacle  of  such  a  perfect  character  thus  ad¬ 
mired  and  praised  by  a  whole  nation,  and  held  up  in  the 
Divine  Book  to  the  admiration  of  all  succeeding  ages,  one 
reluctantly  passes  to  mix  with  the  rushing  crowd  along  the 
paths  of  our  daily  life,  as  the  half-rested  traveler  leaves  the 
cool  shade  and  the  refreshing  waters  of  an  oasis  to  face  once 
more  the  sand,  the  glare,  the  heat,  and  the  oppressive  soli¬ 
tude  of  the  desert. 

There  is,  however,  an  example  nearer  our  own  times  of 
perfect  virtue  in  a  man  of  the  world,  which  may  well  com¬ 
pare  with  the  blameless  and  beneficent  career  of  the  great 
Hebrew  prophet,  without  creating  in  the  reader  any  fear  of 
contemporary  allusions. 

How  his  Character  was  formed. 

Who  does  not  know  with  what  incomparable  tenderness 
and  solicitude  the  canonized  Louis  IX.,  King  of  France,  was 
reared  and  educated  by  his  mother,  Blanche  of  Castile, 
deemed  herself,  by  those  who  knew  her  best,  to  be  worthy 
of  a  place  among  the  saints  ?  She  had  come  of  too  heroic  a 
blood  not  to  value  in  her  son  the  chivalrous  virtues  and 
qualities  which  should  grace  a  Christian  king.  She  saw  to 
it  during  her  regency,  that  he  received  an  intellectual  train¬ 
ing  quite  extraordinary  in  an  age  when  persons  of  high  rank 
set  but  little  store  on  literary  attainments.  Louis  was  an 
accomplished  scholar  and  statesman,  as  well  as  a  peerless 
knight  and  commander.  What,  however,  distinguished  him 
above  all  others,  was  his  perfect  Christian  character.  To 
form  this  in  her  boy,  the  God-fearing  queen  would  intrust 
to  no  one  but  herself  his  instruction  in  the  truths  of  reli¬ 
gion,  and  his  training  to  the  practice  of  every  virtue  neces- 


*  1  Kings  (1  Samuel),  xii.  1,  2,  3,  4. 


12 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


sary  to  a  Christian  sovereign.  44  God  knows,  my  son,” 
she  would  often  say  to  him,  as  he  nestled  near  her  heart, 
while  a  mere  child,  or  sat  near  her  in  boyhood,  “God 
knows  I  love  thee  as  well  as  ever  mother  loved  her  dearest. 
Yet  would  I  rather  see  thee  at  any  moment  stretched 
a  corpse  at  my  feet,  than  know  thee  guilty  of  deadly  sin.” 

How  the  docile  child  retained  through  all  his  eventful 
and  heroic  life,  the  molding  then  given  to  his  character,  we 
shall  have  more  than  one  occasion  to  judge  ere  the  end  of 
this  book.  And  remembering  in  after-years  all  the  pains 
taken  for  this  purpose  by  his  admirable  parent,  Louis  was 
fain  to  bestow  on  his  children  the  same  loving  labor.  “  Be¬ 
fore  he  lay  down  in  his  bed,”  relates  his  intimate  friend  and 
biographer,  4 4  he  was  wont  to  have  his  children  brought  to 
him,  and  related  to  them  the  actions  of  godd  kings  and  em¬ 
perors,  and  told  them  to  take  example  by  such  men.  And 
he  likewise  set  before  them  the  deeds  of  bad  princes,  who  had 
lost  their  kingdoms  in  consequence  of  their  licentiousness, 
rapacity,  and  avarice.  ‘I  remind  you  of  these  things,’  he 
would  say,  4  that  you  may  keep  your  souls  free  from  them, 
and  draw  not  on  yourselves  the  divine  wrath.’  He  also 
made  them  learn  their  prayers  to  Our  Lady,  and  made  them 
recite  their  Hours  twice  a  day,  to  accustom  them  thereby  to 
assist  at  the  Hours  (in  the  church),  when  they  should  have 
come  to  govern  their  own  lands.”  * 

Nor,  in  thus  dwelling  on  the  formation  of  character,  and 
recalling  again  and  again  the  qualities  which  enter  into 
chivalry,  do  we  for  a  moment  wish  it  to  be  understood  that 
our  every  word  is  not  addressed  to  the  popular  masses  much 
more  than  to  those  whom  wealth,  or  birth,  or  position  place 
at  the  head  of  the  community.  It  is  most  especially  the 
laboring  classes  in  town  and  country  that  we  are  anxious  to 
see  4  4  generous  and  devoted,  faithful,  and  indifferent  to  their 

*  De  Joinville,  “Life  of  St.  Louis,  King  of  France,”  ch.  xv.  The  “Hours” 
spoken  of  here,  are  the  Canonical  Hours  for  the  recitation  of  the  divine  of¬ 
fice  in  cathedral  or  collegiate  churches.  It  was  then  customary  for  all  who 
could  to  assist  at  these,  or  to  recite  them  in  private  from  their  “Book  of 
Hours.” 


CHARACTER— FORMATION  IN  LABORING  CLASSES.  13 


own  selfish  interest,  full  of  high  honor,  and  not  aiming  to 
follow  the  erring  multitude.”  The  chivalry  which  is  the 
very  spirit  of  true  Christian  manhood,  is  not  the  character  of 
a  social  class,  or  the  distinctive  quality  of  the  highly  born, 
or  the  result  of  the  special  training  given  to  a  privileged 
few.  The  generosity,  the  self-sacrificing  heroism,  which  are 
its  primary  virtues,  have  ever  been  found  in  the  poorest  and 
lowliest,  as  well  as  in  the  foremost  in  rank  and  honor.  “  I 
can  give  you  privileges  and  fiefs,”  said  a  Christian  emperor 
to  a  favorite  who  begged  to  be  ennobled,  “but  I  cannot 
make  you  noble.” 

The  nobility  of  soul,  which  we  here  hold  up  to  your 
admiration,  is  the  joint  product  of  God’s  grace  and  your 
own  generous  cooperation.  Parents  can  and  do  contribute 
greatly  toward  the  creation  of  this  nobility  of  soul  and  con¬ 
duct ;  it  is,  however,  under  God,  the  result  of  one’s  own 
fidelity  to  the  divine  Voice  ever  speaking  in  conscience,  to 
the  divine  Light  ever  showing  steadily  the  path  of  duty  and 
honor,  and  to  the  impulse  of  the  Divine  Spirit  urging  the 
babe  of  the  beggar  as  well  as  the  son  of  the  prince  to  aim 
high,  and  do  nobly,  and  be  in  all  things  true  to  the  light  and 
the  truth  within  them. 

How  Character  should  shine  forth  in  Conduct. 

“I  have  neither  riches,  nor  power,  nor  birth,  to  recom¬ 
mend  me  ;  yet,  if  I  live,  I  trust  I  shall  not  be  of  less  service 
to  mankind  and  my  friends,  than  if  I  had  been  born  with 
these  advantages.”  *  Thus  spoke  at  the  age  of  twenty  a 
poor  lad,  who  had  been  brought  up  in  the  shop  of  his 
father,  a  carver  in  wood,  and  who  was,  when  he  wrote  these 
words  in  his  private  diary,  a  druggist’s  apprentice.  The 
world  knows  to  what  a  height  of  pure  fame  he  attained  by 
dint  of  heroic  labor ;  while  the  laborious  life  found  its  fit¬ 
test  and  sweetest  reward  in  the  peace  and  blessing  of  the 
church  of  his  fathers,  which  took  the  weary  traveler  to  her 
embrace. 


*  Sir  Humphry  Davy. 


14 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


It  is  conduct,  tliat  manifests  “  the  active  doer,  noble 
liver.”  All  man’s  faculties,  with  God’s  light  in  his  mind 
and  the  mighty  impulses  of  the  Spirit  ever  moving  his 
heart,  are  given  him  that  he  should  do ,  that  he  should 
work ,  that  the  light  of  his  life-work  should  go  abroad  to 
his  fellow  men,  showing  them  how  to  live,  to  labor,  to  con¬ 
quer  !  It  is  to  enable  him  to  work  earnestly,  to  live  nobly, 
to  conquer  surely  in  the  strife  with  difficulty  and  hardship 
and  temptation,  that  the  mother’s  loving  nurture  and  wise 
training,  the  father’s  example  and  sustaining  friendship, 
are  given  to  the  child  and  the  youth ;  and  that,  in  man¬ 
hood,  the  sympathy  and  encouragement  of  other  noble 
workers  are  vouchsafed  to  him,  as  Jonathan  was  sent  to 
David,  to  be  his  stay  and  his  joy  in  dreadful  trials. 

Every  Human  Soul  capable  of  High  Culture. 

Let  the  young  men  whom  these  words  may  reach,  bear 
in  mind  the  old  French  proverb  about  farming,  Tant  raut 
Vhomme ,  tant  vaut  sa  terre  (“It  is  the  man  who  makes  the 
land”).'  Just  as  the  richest  soil  is  worthless  in  the  hands 
of  an  ignorant  or  idle  possessor,  even  so  will  the  intelligent 
and  industrious  husbandman  create  a  mine  of  gold  out  o" 
the  poorest  soil.  On  our  planet,  to  be  sure,  there  are 
very  many  tracts  that  we  may  regard  as  incurably  sterile, 
incapable  alike  of  rewarding  the  iabor  of  the  plough  or 
the  toil  of  the  miner.  This  cannot  be  said  of  human  souls 
and  the  pregnant  years  of  human  life. 

The  mind  and  the  heart  of  man,  though  born  in  a  sheep-cot 
or  the  hut  of  a  savage,  are  a  soil  capable  of  bearing  a  rich 
and  an  immortal  harvest  of  Godlike  virtues  and  merits. 
The  years  that  till  even  a  brief  life,  are  a  mine  of  merit, 
richer  and  more  unfailing  than  the  gem-bearing  fields  of 
Brazil  or  Golconda,  or  the  gold  and  silver  laden  chains  of 
the  Bockv  Mountains. 

Let  every  boy,  let  every  youth  lay  to  heart,  —  as  he 
remembers  the  life  -  work  appointed  to  him,  —  these 
dread  words  of  the  Holy  Book: '“Woe  to  them  that 


PUT  YOUR  WHOLE  HEART  IN  YOUR  WORK.  15 

are  faint  -  hearted !  ...  Woe  to  them  that  have  lost  pa¬ 
tience  !  ”  .  .  .  * 

Do  the  work  you  have  to  do  bravely  and  well.  The  dis¬ 
position  to  seek  to  be  perfect  in  everything  one  sets  one’s 
hand  to,  to  make  the  most  of  the  task  allotted  for  the  pres¬ 
ent  day  and  hour,  is  a  divine  instinct,  which,  if  followed 
faithfully,  will  lead  to  certain  eminence,  to  eminence  in 
learning,  in  wealth,  or  in  statesmanship  ;  to  eminence  in 
art,  in  poetry,  in  eloquence,  or  in  sanctity,  according  to 
one’s  chosen  sphere  of  labor. 

Look  forth  upon  the  various  walks  of  life,  in  Church  or 
in  State  :  you  will  find  that  the  men  most  eminent  and  most 
honored  in  every  profession  and  employment,  are  the  men 
who  have  put  their  heart  in  their  work ;  who  have  begun 
with  the  determination  to  do  as  did  the  great  king  of  Juda, 
who  “  wrought  that  which  was  good  and  right,  and  truth 
before  the  Lord  his  God,  .  .  .  desiring  to  seek  his  God 
with  all  his  heart;  and  he  did  it  and  prospered.”  f 

Create  your  Ojiportunities. 

Do  not  wait  for  opportunities.  You  would  only  resemble 
the  stolid  traveler  in  the  fable,  who,  having  come  to  a  river 
which  lay  in  his  path,  sat  down  on  the  bank  till  the  waters 
had  all  flowed  by.  You  would  seek  for  a  ferry,  or  make  a 
raft  on  which  to  cross  :  God  gives  man  invention  to  enable 
him  to  find  resources  against  the  difficulties  toward  his  pro¬ 
gress.  The  difficulty  itself  is  oftentimes  the  most  golden  of 
opportunities.  At  any  rate,  men  of  resolute  temper  seek 
and  find,  or  make  their  opportunities,  just  as  the  industrious 
husbandman  often  makes  the  very  soil  on  which  he  grows 
his  crops.  Have  you  not  seen  one  man  prosper  and  grow 
rich  on  land  on  which  its  former  possessor  grew  hopelessly 
and  helplessly  poorer  year  after  year  ?  Have  you  not  seen 
many  a  stout-hearted  farmer  and  his  sons,  with  no  capital 
but  their  courage,  their  perseverance,  and  the  strong  arms 


*  Ecclesiasticus,  ii.  15,  16. 


f  Paralipomenon  (Chronicles),  xxxi.  20,  21. 


16 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


that  served  a  resolute  will,  cover  many  a  stony  field  with  an 
abundant  harvest,  and  convert  an  unsightly  and  unwhole¬ 
some  swamp  into  a  rich  meadow  or  a  well-stocked  pasture  \ 

Nay,  even  as  these  lines  are  written  under  the  inspiration 
of  the  lovely  spring  weather,  yonder  lie  within  view  the 
once  barren  and  rocky  northern  slopes  of  Central  Park, 
covered  with  a  wealth  of  tree  and  shrub  and  flower,  all 
hastening  to  put  forth  their  vesture  of  tenderest  green. 
We  old  citizens  of  New  York  remember  the  time,  not  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago,  when  a  few  scrubby  firs  scattered 
along  these  crags,  and  a  few  patches  of  grass  and  weeds 
alone  formed  a  contrast  with  the  naked  and  unpicturesque 
rocks.  Now,  on  the  contrary,  all  the  vegetable  wealth  of 
other  lands  has  been  added  to  the  varied  riches  of  our 
native  flora,  to  create  a  paradise,  and  the  very  granite  it¬ 
self  has  been  covered  with  a  gorgeous  mantle  of  flowering 
shrubs  and  graceful  creepers. 

Thus  can  intelligence,  industry,  and  perseverance  convert, 
what  appeared  a  hopelessly  dead  and  barren  nature,  into 
life  and  beauty  and  perpetual  joy. 

Opportunities !  Life  is  one  grand  continuous  opportu¬ 
nity  from  infancy  to  our  latest  day.  The  conscientious, 
the  resolute,  and  the  thrifty  turn  each  hour  into  golden 
treasures ;  the  listless,  the  stolid,  the  sensual,  like  our 
Western  Indians,  allow  the  teeming  mines  to  lie  idle  at 
their  feet,  with  countless  treasures  unknown,  unappreci¬ 
ated,  undeveloped. 

Have  a  Purpose  in  Life. 

Give  us,  therefore,  in  the  conduct  of  life,  men  who  have 
a  purpose,  who  know  what  they  have  to  do,  and  are  deter¬ 
mined  to  succeed  ;  whose  firm  trust  in  God  above  them  only 
increases  their  faith  in  themselves :  men  who  neglect 
nothing  ;  who  constantly  discipline  their  own  minds, 
their  own  hearts,  and  exercise  over  their  own  powers  and 
passions  a  sovereign  control :  men  whose  watchword  in  all 
their  undertakings  and  difficulties,  in  all  their  alternations 


THE  FORCES  DIVINELY  GIVEN  TO  AID  THE  WORKER.  17 

of  bearing  and  forbearing,  is  duty  ;  and  who,  in  their 
labors,  their  successes,  their  failures,  find  themselves  supe¬ 
rior  to  fatigue,  to  good  or  ill  luck,  to  praise  or  to  blame, — 
because  they  begin  and  persevere  and  hope  against  hope 
itself,  through  a  sense  of  duty, — of  a  sacred  debt  due  to 
God  and  their  own  conscience. 

IIow  Education  should  prepare  for  the  Work  of  Life. 

Education,  training,  discipline,  cultivation  of  heart  and 
mind,  at  home  or  at  school,  can  only  aim  at  one  thing  :  to 
prepare  young  men  for  the  business  of  life,  for  conduct, 
self-improvement,  self-control,  and  success  in  the  work, 
which  the  Divine  Will  sets  apart  for  every  individual,  as 
the  sole  purpose  of  his  existence. 

In  the  material  world  we  know  what  is  the  result  of  a 
constantly  accelerating  force,  acting  upon  a  body  moving  in 
a  given  direction,  and  in  what  an  amazing  ratio  its  velocity 
increases  minute  by  minute,  and  hour  by  hour.  It  so  hap¬ 
pens  that  the  Creator,  both  of  the  moral  and  the  material 
universe,  has  stamped  them  both  with  such  marvelous  and 
striking  analogies,  that  the  spectacle  of  power  exhibited  in 
any  field  of  the  inanimate  and  unintelligent  creation,  may 
serve  as  a  help  toward  studying  its  counterpart  in  the  spi¬ 
ritual  order. 

For  there  are  spiritual  forces  created  by  Him  who  is 
the  sole  source  of  life  and  of  power ;  and  they  are  or¬ 
dained  to  act  on  the  souls  of  men  from  the  moment  these 
are  set  forth  by  the  Almighty  Hand  on  the  path  of  duty, 
and  in  the  direction  of  their  eternal  destinies.  Call  these 
forces  acting  upon  man’s  rational  nature,  graces  ;  they  are 
given  as  light  to  his  mind,  enabling  him  clearly  to  know  his 
duty  toward  God,  toward  himself,  and  toward  his  neigh¬ 
bor  ;  given  as  instinct,  impulse,  inspiration  to  his  will,  en¬ 
abling  him  to  live  up  to  the  light  that  is  in  him.  These 
mighty  impulses,  if  obeyed  faithfully  by  the  soul — which 
can  freely  reject  the  proffered  aid  and  vital  force,  as  it  can 
freely  accejjt  and  follow  the  divine  direction,  urging  it  ever 
2 


18 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


upward  and  heavenward — have  an  accelerating  character ; 
they  augment,  in  a  constantly  increasing  ratio,  the  soul’s 
power  of  getting  nearer  to  God, — nearer  to  him  in  perfection 
and  spiritual  beauty.  They  lift  her  with  an  augmented  ve¬ 
locity  to  new  heights  of  goodness,  of  charity,  of  courage,  of 
generosity,  self-denial,  and  self-sacrifice.  They  enable  her 
to  become  more  and  more  Godlike  at  each  moment  of  her 
earthly  career. 

Just  as  in  the  mysterious  depths  of  space  in  the  starry 
heavens,  the  various  bodies  which  eye  or  telescope  can  dis¬ 
cern,  are  impelled  onward  in  their  various  courses  with  a 
rapidity  which  appals  even  the  scientific  imagination,  even 
so  in  the  world  of  souls  are  there  depths  beyond  depths, 
reaching  away  to  limitless  horizons,  and  heights  above 
heights  of  acquired  holiness,  merit,  and  glory,  making 
great  and  good  human  souls  differ  from  each  other  and 
transcend  each  other  in  excellence,  as  bright  star  surpasses 
brightest  star  in  splendor. 

•  « 

Superior  Excellence  demanded  of  the  Men  of  our  Bay . 

jr  • 

Hence,  whatever  in  the  past  may  have  been  the  various 
glories  of  great  men — men  distinguished  above  their  fellows 
for  Godlike  virtue  much  more  than  intellectual  superiority 
— yet  must  we  rest  well  assured  that  it  is  the  Divine  Will, 
that  we  in  our  day  and  generation,  should  aim  with  His 
help,  to  rise  higher  still  in  goodness,  in  generosity,  in  no¬ 
bility  of  conduct. 

For— and  we  must  not  mislearn  this  vitally  important  les¬ 
son  to  every  one  of  us — the  formation  of  a  great  character, 
and  the  attainment  of  this  same  nobility  of  conduct,  de¬ 
pend  on  our  helping  ourselves.  The  experience  and  prac¬ 
tical  wisdom  of  all  past  ages  have  expressed  a  golden 
truth  in  the  saying :  “  God  helps  only  who  helps  him¬ 
self.” 

It  behooves  every  parent,  every  serious-minded  person  in 
the  community  to  weigh  well  the  following  words,  written 
by  a  well-known  writer  on  the  education  given  in  Great 


THE  MANLY  CHARACTER  A  GENTLEMANLY  ONE.  19 

Britain.  How  far  they  apply,  if  at  all,  to  onr  own  country, 
our  readers  must  judge  for  themselves. 

“ There  is  an  ambition,”  says  Smiles,  “to  bring  up  boys 
as  gentlemen,  or  rather  genteel  men  ;  though  the  result  fre¬ 
quently  is,  only  to  make  them  gents.  They  acquire  a  taste 
for  dress,  style,  luxuries,  and  amusements,  which  can  never 
form  any  solid  foundation  for  manly  or  gentlemanly  charac¬ 
ter  ;  and  the  result  is  that  we  have  a  vast  number  of  ginger¬ 
bread  young  gentry  thrown  upon  the  world,  who  remind 
one  of  the  abandoned  hulls  sometimes  picked  up  at  sea, 
with  only  a  monkey  on  board.”  * 

Yery  different  must  be  the  result,  if  the  great  principles 
advocated  in  this  book,  and  the  memorable  examples  which 
illustrate  their  practice,  are  made  the  basis  of  the  moral 
training  given  in  families,  schools,  and  colleges,  or  adopted 
as  a  guide  by  men  of  the  world  capable  of  influencing  the 
young  and  inexperienced  who  look  up  to  them. 

Let  our  Young  Men  be  God-fearing  and  Dutiful. 

Whatever  else  our  young  men  may  be,  when  formed  at 
home  by  such  parents  as  we  are  about  to  describe,  and 
trained  in  Christian  schools  by  God-fearing  and  accom¬ 
plished  masters,  they  will  be  at  least  conscientious  and  God¬ 
fearing  themselves. 

This  is  the  first  and  greatest  need  of  our  age. 

They  will  be  also  dutiful  and  high-minded.  For  the 
young  man  whose  soul  from  childhood  has  been  filled  with 
that  lofty  sense  of  duty,  as  of  a  sacred,  indispensable,  and 
ennobling  obligation  due  to  the  Most  High  God,  will  be 
disposed  to  discharge  every  office  intrusted  to  him,  as  if 
he  were  immediately  accountable  to  the  Divine  Majesty. 
Hence  everything  shall  be  done  perfectly,  because  done 
for  the  sake  of  Him  who  is  the  most  loving  of  Fathers,  and 
the  most  generous  of  benefactors. 

High-minded  must  ever  be  the  men  who  are  penetrated 


*“  Self-Help.” 


20 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


with  this  sense  of  duty,  and  act  upon  such  lofty  motives. 
He  who  beholds  the  Infinitely  Great  and  Holy  in  every  per¬ 
son  to  whom  he  is  bound  to  yield  lawful  obedience,  will  not 
feel  himself  degraded  in  being  subordinate  to  those  who 
may  be  his  own  inferiors  in  birth,  in  education,  and  refine¬ 
ment.  He  will  not  fulfill  his  duty  conscientiously,  or  go 
even  beyond  his  duty  in  his  endeavor  to  do  well,  because 
he  is  ambitions  to  obtain  praise,  or  fearful  of  incurring 
blame.  He  is  only  supremely  desirous  of  pleasing  One  who 
values  the  loving  wish  much  more  even  than  the  perfect 
performance. 

And  this  higli-mindedness  will  be  thus  a  safeguard  against 
that  baneful  and  tyrannical  human  respect,  which  is  so  apt 
to  make  old  people  as  well  as  young  omit  the  good  they 
ought  to  do,  and  do  the  evil  their  conscience  condemns,  lest 
they  should  draw  on  themselves  the  displeasure,  the  ridi¬ 
cule,  or  the  vain  judgments  of  bad  men. 

The  dutiful  and  the  high-minded  will  ever  be  the  faithful, 
the  trustworthy,  true  to  the  death,  because  true  to  God  and 
to  themselves. 

Need,  in  out  Day ,  of  the  High-minded  and  Dutif  ul 

Surely  there  is  great  need  of  such  in  our  day. 

And  because  they  are  thus  dutiful  and  true, — they  will 
be  diligent,  laborious,  persevering,  self-denying,  and  self- 
reliant,  because  placing  their  main  dependence  on  the  All- 
Miglity  and  putting  forth  to  please  Him,  in  their  every 
work  and  endeavor,  their  whole  strength  and  industry. 
Such  men  are, — everything  taken  into  account, — the  best 
calculated  to  succeed. 

And  such  men, — be  they  born  never  so  lowly, — are  God’s 
true  gentlemen, — the  men  whom  all  are  forced  to  respect, 
— because  they  are  incapable  of  meanness,,  fraud,  or  un- 
trutlifulness. 

These  are  a  few  only  of  the  features  of  the  True  Man  so 
needed  in  all  countries  and  at  all  periods  of  the  world’s  his¬ 
tory,  but  especially  needed  at  a  time  when  noble  living  will 


THE  MANLY  CHARACTER  A  CHIVALROUS  ONE. 


21 


avail  infinitely  more  to  save  religion  and  society  than  elo¬ 
quent  discoursing  or  the  most  learned  and  beautiful  writing. 

Yes  !  the  road  of  true  manliness  and  unblemished  honor 
which  we  are  to  travel  over  together,  leads  up  by  steep  and 
toilsome  paths  to  the  only  reward  worthy  of  gentle  souls. 
Like  the  maiden-knight  of  the  ideal  Christian  chivalry,  if 
we  would  keep  our  souls  pure,  and  win  the  ecstatic  joy  of 
coming  to  close  communion  with  the  veiled  Majesty  of  our 
Father,  we  must  be  ready  to  do  and  bear  what  the  crowd 
recoil  from. 

“  I  leave  tlie  plain,  I  climb  the  height ; 

No  branchy  thicket  shelter  yields  ; 

But  blessed  forms  in  whistling  storms 
Fly  o’er  waste  fens  and  windy  fields. 

A  maiden-knight — to  me  is  given 
Such  hope,  I  know  not  fear  ; 

I  yearn  to  breathe  the  airs  of  heaven 
That  often  meet  me  here. 

I  muse  on  joy  that  will  not  cease, 

Pure  spaces  clothed  in  living  beams, 

Pure  lilies  of  eternal  peace, 

Whose  odors  haunt  my  dreams  ; 

And,  stricken  by  an  angel’s  hand, 

This  mortal  armor  that  I  wear. 

This  weight  and  size,  this  heart  and  eyes, 

Are  touched,  are  turned  to  finest  air.”  * 


*  Tennyson,  “  Sir  Galahad 


CHAPTER  II. 

IDEAL  OP  THE  TKTTE  MAN’S  HOME. 


Nor  do  I  find  that  the  Heaven  of  heavens,  which  is  the  Lord’s,  can  be  better 
called  than  Thine  House,  which  contemplatetli  Thy  delight  without  any  need 
of  going  forth  to  another.  .  .  .  That  chaste  City  of  Thine,  our  Mother,  which  is 
above,  and  is  free  .  .  .  clinging  unto  Thee  writh  sublime  love,  shineth  and 
gloweth  from  Thee  like  a  perpetual  noon.  O  House  full  of  light  and  splendor  ! 
I  have  loved  thy  beauty,  and  the  place  where  dwelleth  the  glory  of  my  Lord, 
thy  builder  and  owner. — St.  Augustine. 

There  is  a  most  beautiful  and  affecting  passage  at  tlie 
close  of  tlie  very  last  historical  book  left  us  by  one  of  the 
greatest  of  patriots  and  legislators,  reciting  the  magnificent 
prospect  afforded  him,  just  before  his  death,  of  the  beauti¬ 
ful  country  divinely  promised  to  his  race.  From  the  top 
of  a  mountain,  at  its  southernmost  extremity,  he  beheld  the 
lovely  home  of  his  people  stretching  out  before  him  in  its 
length  and  breadth,  smiling  like  the  Garden  of  God  in  the 
world’s  prime.  The  sight  was  the  last  earthly  reward  be¬ 
stowed  on  upward  of  a  century’s  labors,  hopes,  and  suffer¬ 
ings,  before  the  eternal  rest  came  to  the  great  pilgrim  and 
prophet. 

Can  we  not,  at  the  outset  of  our  quest  after  true  man¬ 
hood,  its  ideal  types,  and  glorious  realizations,  cast  a  glance 
at  God’s  beautiful  earth  before  us,  in  which  He  bids  us  to 
create  ourselves  a  paradise  with  his  own  assistance,  bethink¬ 
ing  us  of  the  Eternal  Home  which  is  to  be  our  rest,  and  ani¬ 
mating  ourselves  to  make  of  the  earthly  home  its  image 
and  counterpart  ? 

Is  it  not  significant  of  a  deep  purpose  that  we  should  read 
in  the  very  first  pages  of  Holy  Writ,  how  “  the  Lord  God 

22 


CREATION  OF  A  HOME,  THE  FIRST  WORK. 


23 


took  man  and  put  him  into  the  paradise  of  pleasure,  to  dress 
it,  and  to  keep  it  ”  ?  *  There  is  no  doubt  but  this  Garden  of 
Delights,  selected  by  the  All-Father  from  out  the  wide  and 
lovely  land  of  Eden,  was  the  blissful  home  which  he  destined 
to  our  innocent  First  Parents  and  their  innocent  offspring. 
Fairer  far  than  all  the  earth  beside,  the  manifold  beauties 
which  this  abode  displayed,  its  peace,  its  security,  the  vis¬ 
ible  manifestations  vouchsafed  to  its  inhabitants  of  the 
Divine  Presence  and  of  the  angelic  spirits, — were  all  in¬ 
tended  to  lift  up  man’s  thoughts  and  hopes  toward  the  Eter¬ 
nal  Paradise,  prepared  for  him  and  his,  as  their  resting  place 
after  labor  and  the  crown  of  all  the  merits  acquired  by  trial 
here  below. 

Fair,  indeed,  as  was  the  portion  of  earth  thus  set  apart  by 
the  Creator  for  the  dwelling  of  his  privileged  creatures,  and 
filled,  as  we  may  fancy  it,  with  all  the  delights  that  made  it 
a  vision  and  foretaste  of  Heaven, — yet  did  God  leave  much 
to  man  to  do,  in  order  to  make  of  that  Garden  a  home 
which  should  be  truly  his  own, — the  creation  of  his  own 
love  and  industry. 

Adam  had  been  created  outside  of  this  Garden  of  Delights, 
in  some  less  favored  portion  of  the  vast  domain  reserved  for 
his  descendants.  He  thus  was  enabled,  when  transferred 
by  his  Divine  Benefactor  to  the  earthly  paradise,  to  judge 
by  comparison  of  the  immense  superiority  of  his  new  abode 
to  all  that  his  eyes  had  beheld  hitherto.  This  brief  experi¬ 
ence  prepared  him  to  improve  by  his  own  husbandry  even 
the  teeming  soil  of  paradise,  and  to  guard  with  unwearied 
watchfulness  the  untold  wealth, — intrusted  to  him  not  only 
in  all  the  produce  of  this  fairy  spot,  but  in  his  own  soul 
and  its  destinies,  in  the  companion  soon  given  to  him  in 
Eve,  in  their  united  innocence  and  bliss,  and  in  the  welfare 
of  their  offspring. 

Thus,  in  the  Home  bestowed  on  him  who  first  on  earth 
bore  the  name  of  father  and  discharged  its  duties,  we  find 
that  there  was  imposed  a  double  law,  regarding  solely  home¬ 
happiness  and  well -being, — the  law  of  labor  and  of  vigilance. 


*  Genesis,  ii.  15. 


24 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Tliis  law  is  still  the  blessed  necessity  which  ennobles  the 
life  of  man,  and  creates  within  his  earthly  home  all  that  it 
can  possess  of  bliss  and  nobleness  :  Every  true  man  has  to 
work  to  create  Ms  home ,  when  he  has  it  not ;  to  preserve  and 
increase  its  stores,  where  he  receives  it  by  inheritance  ;  and 
he  has  to  watch  over  its  honor,  its  happiness,  its  security, 
with  a  most  loving  care. 

We  recall  this  primordial  law,  as  well  as  the  existence  of 
the  home  to  which  it  immediately  applied,  not  that  we  may 
insist  on  its  scope  and  fulfillment  in  this  chapter — that  must 
be  reserved  to  another  part  of  our  work — but  that  we  may 
set  forth  the  design  of  the  Almighty  Wisdom,  as  displayed 
in  His  own  labors  in  preparing  us  a  Home  eternal  in  the 
heavens,  and  in  aiding  us  to  be  ourselves  worthy  of  it  in 
our  own  home-life  here  below. 

The  Work  of  the  Almighty  Father  is  to  prepare  our 

Eternal  Home. 

In  setting  before  your  minds,  O  Christian  men,  who  take 
up  this  book  and  peruse  its  pages,  the  great  central  fact 
in  all  religion  and  in  all  history,  that  the  mighty  “Work 
of  God  in  the  midst  of  years,  ’  ’  *  the  divine  work  of  Re¬ 
demption  in  its  complete  economy,  is  but  the  preparation 
in  time  of  the  Home  of  eternity,  there  is  a  twofold  fear  that 
oppresses  the  writer.  Were  he  to  express  in  befitting 
words  the  glorious  reality  so  magnificently  and  still  so  im¬ 
perfectly  described  in  Scripture,  he  would  feel  as  if  the 
reader  might  justly  suspect  him  of  exaggeration.  And  when 
he  would  attempt  to  convey  in  the  simplest  terms  the  over¬ 
whelming  truth  about  God’s  love  for  the  human  race,  as 
manifested  in  the  almost  deified  condition  reserved  in  the 
life  to  come  to  His  faithful  servants,  and  in  the  Godlike 
rank  and  virtues,  which  are  to  be  the  condition  of  the  true 
Christian  in  the  present  life,  he  cannot  but  dread  lest  the 

*  “  0  Lord,  I  have  heard  thy  hearing,  and  was  afraid.  0  Lord,  thy  work,  in 
the  midst  of  years  bring  it  to  life  ;  in  the  midst  of  years  thou  shalt  make  it 
known.” — Prophecy  of  Hdbacuc,  iii.  2. 


TIME  A  PREPARATION  OF  ETERNITY. 


25 


infirmities  of  language  should  fail  to  convey  the  great  tran¬ 
scendent  truth. 

And  yet  the  entire  scheme  of  God’ s  work  in  creating  the 
world  and  man,  in  appointing  to  him  a  supernatural  rank 
and  destiny,  in  raising  him  up  through  Christ,  when  fallen 
from  his  high  estate,  in  creating  through  Christ  a  Spiritual 
House  and  Kingdom  for  the  whole  race,  which  is  only  a 
type  of  the  Eternal  Home  and  Kingdom,  and  in  making  of 
that  Home  above  the  masterpiece  and  crowning  work  oi 
His  power,  His  wisdom,  and  His  love, — may  be  best  stated 
to  the  mind  alike  of  untutored  childhood,  and  of  cultivated 
manhood,  by  saying  that  the  joint  labors  of  God  the  Father, 
of  Christ  His  incarnate  Son,  and  of  the  Divine  Spirit  abid¬ 
ing  with  man  evermore,  — consist  in  preparing  for  mankind 
a  Home  in  the  heavens  worthy  of  God’s  utmost  magnifi¬ 
cence,  and  of  enabling  mankind  in  this  life  to  deserve  the 
unspeakable  glories  of  that  Eternal  Home. 

Do  not  weary  yet,  of  the  golden  thought  held  out  to  you, 
like  a  potent  spell- word,  which,  if  you  grasp  and  retain  it 
lovingly,  will  open  to  your  soul  many  ravishing  prospects 
and  sunny  horizons  stretching  away  among  the  eternal 
hills.  *  Hear,  rather,  one  or  two  mighty  voices  whose  ac¬ 
cents  thrill  upon  the  reverent  soul,  startling  it  like  light¬ 
ning  flashing  from  opposite  sides  of  the  heavens. 

<  <  From  the  beginning  of  the  world  they  have  not  heard, 
nor  perceived  with  the  ears  ;  the  eye  hath  not  seen,  O  God, 
besides  thee,  what  things  thou  hast  prepared  for  them  that 
wait  for  thee.”  * — “Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard, 
neither  hath  it  entered  into  the  heart  of  man,  what  things 
God  hath  prepared  for  them  that  love  him.”  f 

Hear  how  he  whose  pen  was  said  to  drop  honey,  the  great 
St.  Bernard,  comments  on  this  passage  : 

“Tell  us,  O  Thou  who  preparest  these  things,  what  it  is 
that  thou  preparest : — ‘  we  shall  be  filled  with  the  good 
things  of  thy  house.’  — But  what  are  these  good  things? 
Wine,  oil,  and  bread? — With  all  these  we  are  familiar  ;  we 
see  them  with  our  eyes,  they  pall  upon  our  taste.  What  we 


*  Isaias,  lxiv.  4. 


f  1  Corinthians,  ii.  9. 


\  Psalm  lxiv.  5. 


26 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


seek  is  wliat  eye  hath  not  seen,  0  God,  besides  thee.  .  .  . 
Here  it  is  :  God  shall  be  all  things  in  all  of  us.  In  the  pres- 
,  ent  life  our  reason  is  liable  to  frequent  error  in  its  conclu¬ 
sions,  our  will  is  swayed  by  a  fourfold  disturbing  influence, 
and  our  memory  is  confused  by  obliviousness  of  every  kind. 
To  these  three  infirmities  is  thy  glorious  creature  sub¬ 
jected,  O  God,  sadly  to  his  discomfort,  but  not  hopelessly. 
For  He  who  satisfieth  in  good  things  the  desire  of  the  soul, 
will  Himself  be  to  our  reason  the  fullness  of  light,  to  our 
will  the  deep  and  overflowing  tide  of  peace,  and  to  our 
memory  the  unbroken  course  of  eternity. 

‘  ‘  O  Truth  !  O  Love  !  O  Eternity  !  O  blessed  and  bliss-be¬ 
stowing  Trinity !  for  thee  doth  this  threefold  wretched¬ 
ness  of  mine  ever  miserably  yearn,  exiled  as  I  am  from 
Thee !  ”  * 

The  Chief  Work  of  every  True  Father  among  men ,  is  to 

create  a  Home. 

It  is  clear,  from  all  this,  that,  after  the  salvation  of  one’s 
own  soul,  which  must  underlie  the  aims,  thoughts,  and 
actions  of  every  Christian  man,  what  is  chiefly  to  be  the 
end  of  every  true  father’s  efforts,  is  the  building  up  and 
sanctifying  of  a  home,  if  he  has  none ;  or  the  maintain¬ 
ing  and  perfecting  it  in  all  honor,  peace,  prosperity,  and 
happiness,  where  it  exists. 

This  is,  in  God’ s  design  and  under  His  expressly  declared 
will,  the  first  and  chief  object  of  a  true  man’s  solicitude. 

Thus,  while  the  divine  Architect  of  the  universe,  con¬ 
jointly  with  the  angels  who  are  the  ministers  of  his  fatherly 
providence  over  us,  and  with  all  true  men  who  are  laboring 
in  conformity  to  the  divine  will, — is  preparing  in  heaven  a 
dwelling-place  for  all  his  faithful  children,  more  magnifi¬ 
cent  than  human  intelligence  can  conceive  of, — even  so 
must  you,  beneath  His  eye,  blessed  and  aided  by  him  and 
his  Angels,  set  about  rearing  your  home  or  making  of  it  the 
image  here  below  of  that  House  of  God  on  high,  where,  in 


*  Sermo  ii.  in  Cant. 


MAKE  TEE  EARTHLY  HOME  LIKE  TEE  HEAVENLY.  27 

the  words  of  St.  Bernard,  all  shall  be  “  Truth,  and  Love 
and  Eternity,” — truth  in  your  faith  and  your  life,  charity 
in  your  dealings  with  your  household  and  all  outside  of  it, 
and  eternity  so  far  as  you  can  secure  it,  in  the  independ¬ 
ence  gained  for  your  dear  ones,  in  the  spirit  of  faith  and 
honor  which  you  bequeath  to  them,  in  the  very  homestead 
itself  which  is  to  be  a  lasting  center  for  their  children’s 
children. 

Nor,  in  the  place  of  Him  who,  true  Father  as  he  is,  knows 
no  acceptation  of  persons, — is  this  primary  and  all-important 
duty  of  providing,  maintaining,  and  brightening  the  family 
home,  the  exclusive  duty  of  the  great  and  the  rich.  There 
is  not  a  poor  laboring-man,  who  makes  it  his  care  to  pro¬ 
cure  shelter,  food,  and  raiment  for  his  dear  ones, — that  is 
not  obliged  to  aim  at  having  his  own  home  for  them,  and  of 
making  that  home  an  image  of  heaven.  There  is  not  a 
youth  who  takes  on  himself  the  responsibilities  of  husband, 
who  binds  to  his  own  lot  the  young  wife  of  his  choice, — 
who  does  not  thereby  bind  himself  to  separate  her  from 
the  whole  world,  to  give  her  a  home  of  her  own,  where  she 
shall  be  sole  mistress  and  queen. 

Whether  you  be  of  high  or  of  low  degree,  a  man  of 
wealth  or  a  poor  man  depending  on  the  earning  of  each 
day,  whether  advanced  in  years  and  with  much  experience 
of  life’s  difficulties,  or  just  setting  your  foot  on  the  path, — 
be  earnest  in  your  resolution  to  work  in  building  up  your 
home,  and  with  it  the  honor  and  happiness  of  a  family,  and 
sing  in  your  heart  as  you  begin  the  effort  of  each  new  day 
and  hour ! 

This  is  the  Golden  Rule  of  life  for  all  of  us,  men  of  the 
world,  or  ministers  of  God’s  sacraments,  to  set  our  hands 
earnestly  and  joyously  to  the  joint  work  God  appoints  us 
to  do — 

To  build  up  True  Christian  Homes! 

The  teaching  and  guidance  of  the  priest  are  ordained 
only  as  a  help  to  fathers  of  families, — from  those  who  rule 
States,  to  those  who  are  the  lowliest  and  poorest.  The  help 


28 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


of  tlie  governing  classes,  in  their  turn,  as  well  as  of  the 
wealthy,  is,  by  the  law  of  Christian  charity,  due  to  their 
dependent  and  fortuneless  brethren.  So  that  the  whole 
effort  of  religion  and  of  the  most  favored  members  of  the 
social  body,  should  aim  at  assisting  the  poor  man  to  create 
for  himself  a  home,  and  to  adorn  it  with  all  the  best  virtues 
of  fatherhood. 

This  is  the  need  of  the  age.  We  must  have  true  Chris¬ 
tian  fathers  and  true  Christian  homes.  Socialism  and  Com¬ 
munism  present  a  frightful  caricature  of  the  helpful  bro¬ 
therly  love  which  is  the  soul  and  the  bond  of  unity  in  all 
States  obeying  the  law  of  the  Gospel.  The  earnest  and 
successful  labors  of  the  directing  classes  to  inculcate  paren¬ 
tal  duty,  to  practice  and  enforce  the  sweet  home-virtues, 
and  especially  to  aid  the  laboring-man  in  securing  for  him¬ 
self  the  privacy  and  the  sanctities  of  home-life,  constitute 
the  only  efficacious  corrective  to  the  pestilential  errors  of 
communistic  declaimers  and  conspirators. 

The  charity  which  we  thus  urge  upon  the  men  of  our  day 
is  not  the  exercise  of  a  new  virtue,  nor  the  application  of  a 
new  remedy  to  social  evils  unheard  of  till  now. 

The  very  birds  of  the  air,  the  very  insects  in  the  field 
would  teach  mankind  how  to  make  of  the  creation  of  the 
home  a  joint  labor,  and  a  labor  of  love  as  well.  To  be  sure, 
we  know  that  it  is  the  special  part  of  a  man  to  provide  a 
home  for  his  companion  and  their  children,  as  well  as  to 
labor  for  its  support  and  to  watch  over  its  security.  We 
are  here  talking  not  only  of  the  house  which  shelters  the 
family,  but  of  the  love  which  brightens  and  warms  it,  and 
of  all  the  admirable  virtues  that  should  make  its  chief  orna¬ 
ment.  Even  in  the  building  up  of  the  material  walls,  the 
poor  man1  s  wife  will  have  to  be  most  frequently  his  loving 
assistant,  while  in  all  the  affections  and  virtues  that  make 
it  a  paradise,  both  have  to  contribute  a  generous  share. 

Just  now,  however,  as  the  apostles  of  evil  are  endeavor¬ 
ing  to  inculcate  on  the  mind  of  the  laborer,  that  home  and 
its •  sanctities  and  duties  are  the  creation  of  the  laborer’s 
worst  enemies,  it  will  be  well,  after  seeing  the  example 


TEE  CREATION  OF  TEE  HOME  A  JOINT  LABOR .  29 


which  God  sets  to  man  in  His  own  most  glorious  work,  to 
take  a  lesson  from  the  bird  and  the  bee. 

Man  Taught  to  Labor  by  the  Birds. 

*See  how  they  labor  together,  impelled  by  that  instinct  or 
half-intelligence  given  them  by  their  wise  Creator,  to  con¬ 
struct  a  nest  in  which  they  can  shelter  and  rear  their  young. 
And  how  admirable  are  both  their  labor  and  their  intelli¬ 
gence!  Just  when  the  first  sure  signs  of  returning  spring 
and  settled  weather  tell  the  husbandman  that  he  can  trust  his 
seed  to  the  ground,  we  see  in  our  northern  climates  the  birds 
in  pairs  selecting  proper  sites  for  their  nests.  The  amount 
of  labor,  industry,  and  perseverance,  which  even  the  very 
smallest  of  these  feathered  tribes  display  in  this,  surely  ought 
to  be  a  lesson  to  the  observant  among  us.  Both  birds  are 
equally  diligent  in  collecting  materials  and  in  rearing  the 
walls  of  the  structure,  though  it  would  appear  that  the  task 
of  giving  the  interior  its  shape,  and  of  lining  it  with  the  soft 
materials  that  are  to  keep  the  eggs  warm  and  to  shield  the 
callow  young  during  their  first  period  of  helplessness,  is 
left  to  the  female, — not  a  little  suggestive  of  the  mother’s 
office  in  regulating  and  adorning  the  interior  of  her  home. 

They  often  work  from  the  first  peep  of  dawn  till  after  the 
last  glow  of  twilight  to  complete  their  undertaking.  And 
what  intelligence  is  displayed  in  the  selection  of  the  site, 
the  choice  of  the  materials,  and  the  wonderful  and  varied 
industry  with  which  these  materials  are  employed  for  their 
destined  purpose  !  For  among  birds  there  are  miners,  and 
carpenters,  and  masons,  as  well  as  weavers,  tailors,  and  felt- 
makers,  manifesting  in  their  craft  a  skill  so  marvelous,  and 
such  a  science  of  adaptation  to  climate,  locality,  and  danger, 
that  one  is  struck  with  admiration  in  studying  the  mas¬ 
terpieces  which  these  feathered  artisans  produce.  These 
weaver  and  tailor  birds  know  also  how  to  associate  into 
guilds  for  mutual  protection  against  their  many  foes,  and 
their  numbers  render  them  secure  against  the  most  power¬ 
ful  birds  of  prey. 


30 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Taught  by  the  Bee  and  the  Ant. 

Need  we  descend  to  the  well-known  examples  of  the  bee 
and  the  ant  ?  Indeed,  the  admirable  constructions  of  these 
little  insects  (we  omit  to  mention  so  many  other  species 
well  known  to  the  reader),  are  more  like  the  homes  of  civil¬ 
ized  folk,  than  the  most  elaborate  nests  of  birds,  whether 
solitary  or  gregarious.  The  nests  of  these  are,  for  the  most 
part,  temporary,  made  of  perishable  materials,  and  destined 
to  rear  the  brood  of  the  season.  Not  so  the  hive  of  the 
honey-bee,  or  the  prodigious  structure  reared  by  the  white 
ant ;  these  are  permanent  homes,  where  generation  after 
generation  of  laborers  is  born  and  reared,  and  whence,  the 
old  home  becoming  too  narrow,  and  not  admitting  of  en¬ 
largement,  colony  after  colony  will  issue  forth  to  create 
new  homes,  adorned  by  the  same  intelligence,  laborious 
habits,  thrift,  order,  sobriety,  and  indomitable  perseverance, 
displayed  in  the  ways  of  their  ancestors. 

Yes,  all  nature  teaches  man  these  golden  lessons  of  in¬ 
dustry,  loving  co-operation,  mutual  aid,  and  dependence, 
order,  purpose,  system,  devotion  to  the  welfare  and  happi¬ 
ness  of  others,  union  of  minds  and  hearts  and  hands  under 
God  to  create  and  preserve  anything  lasting  and  glorious. 

What  is  man  without  a  home  \  More  helpless  and 
wretched  than  the  beast,  the  fowl,  or  the  insect.  He  is 
both  the  enemy  and  the  prey  of  every  creature  on  the  face 
of  the  earth.  But  with  a  home,  which  he  has  labored  to 
create,  or  to  preserve  and  perfect,  which  he  lights  up  with 
the  lofty  examples  of  his  life,  where, — like  God  Himself  in 
the  world, — he  only  lives  to  do  good  and  make  others  good 
and  happy,  where  the  love  he  gives  is  returned  to  him  a 
hundred-fold  by  the  dear  ones  who  owe  him  everything, — is 
not  man  a  most  Godlike  being  ? 

With  this  rapid  glance  at  that  sweet  and  sublime  ideal 
which  Religion  holds  up  to  the  true  man,  let  us  now  turn 
to  the  beautiful  and  soul-stirring  realities  of  actual  life,  to 
the  mighty  divine-human  forces  at  work  beneath  our  eyes 
in  creating  and  embellishing  true  Christian  Homes. 


CHAPTER  III. 


THE  TRUE  MAN’S  HOME  DUTIES. 

9 

We  make  tlie  world  we  live  in  ;  and  we  weave 
About  us  webs  of  good  or  ill,  which  leave 
Their  impress  on  our  souls. 

The  world  which  is  to  be  to  you  a  fairy -land  where  all  is 
perpetual  spring  and  uuclouded  sunshine  to  the  soul,  is 
your  own 'home,  as  you  make  it ;  it  will  be  the  ever-present 
image  and  foretaste  of  that  other  land  where  joy  is  none, 
nor  peace,  nor  love,  nor  hope,  if  you  fail  to  fulfill  these  sacred 
home-duties  which  are  to  you  the  law  of  life.  Where  there  is 
self-caused  misery  within  the  home,  there  can  be,  for  any  man 
who  has  the  fear  of  God,  but  little  happiness  or  enjoyment 
in  the  wide  world  outside.  To  a  husband  and  a  father,  with 
a  home  still  left  to  him,  the  roses  with  which  pleasure  would 
crown  him  outside  of  it,  would  be  a  crown  of  piercing  thorns, 
the  laurels  bound  round  his  brow  would  seem  a  diadem  of 
flame,  and  the  most  delicious  fruits  of  the  world’s  banquet 
would  turn  to  ashes  and  bitterness  in  his  mouth.  God, 
who  ordained  the  home-virtues  as  the  foundation  of  the 
moral  world,  owes  it  to  himself  and  to  us,  that  no  father  of 
a  family  shall  find  solid  happiness  or  lasting  honor  any¬ 
where  else  than  by  the  side  of  his  wife,  in  the  midst  of  his 
children,  and  beneath  the  roof  which  the  divine  blessing 
has  hallowed  as  his  home.  If  he  has  won  her  love,  their 
reverence,  and  the  admiration  of  the  outside  world,  the 
wreath  that  she  will  weave  for  him  will  seem  dearer  and 
more  enviable  than  the  diadem  of  kings,  the  caresses  of  his 
children  sweeter  than  the  enthusiastic  applause  of  multi- 

31 


32 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


tildes,  and  tlie  meal  spread  forth  by  love  on  his  own  table, 
more  delicious  than  the  viands  of  the  gods. 

How  many  homes  have  we  not  seen  among  the  laboring 
poor  where  the  simple,  and  often  the  scanty,  fare,  seasoned 
by  contentment  and  true  love  and  a  good  conscience,  was, 
in  very  trnth,  a  foretaste  of  the  banquet  of  heaven !  How 
truly  were  the  mutual  affection  and  the  delight  in  each 
other  that  welled  up  in  these  pure,  simple,  brave  hearts, 
the  magnificent  reward  of  Him  whose  ecstatic  presence  even 
in  this  life  overflows  hearts  unoccupied  by  worldly  affec¬ 
tions,  as  the  rising  tide  fills  with  its  rushing  waters  the  bare 
bays  and  creeks  of  the  seaboard  ! 

Learn  we  then  to  “make  the  world  we  live  in,”  “  to  dress 
and  to  keep”  the  paradise,  “  the  garden  of  delights”  we 
call  our  home.  In  that  twofold  labor  the  Divine  Author 
of  man’ s  being  would  not  have  him  to  be  alone  :  He  gives 
the  man  of  the  world  a  companion,  a  helpmate,*  a  friend, 
dear,  devoted,  and  to  be  cherished  beyond  all  that  is  not 
God.  The  true  man’s  first  duty,  after  God,  is  to  his  wife. 

Conjugal  Love  the  great  creative  and  conservative  Force  in 

the  Home. 

Since  the  days  of  Adam  and  Eve  there  has  been  a  great 
outcry  against  the  latter,  as  if  she  were  the  sole  or  most 
guilty  cause  of  that  primal  offense  which  lost  our  race  the 
earthly  paradise.  It  is  certain  that  our  first  father,  who 
had  been  weak  enough  to  listen  to  the  tempting  voice  of  his 
companion,  was  also  unmanly  enough  to  throw  the  whole 
blame  of  his  own  guilt  upon  her.  Ever  since,  the  descend¬ 
ants  of  this  unhappy  pair  have  been  divided  as  to  the 
proper  share  of  husband  and  wife  in  the  ruin  and  misery 
of  homes  from  which  God’s  blessing  had  been  banished. 
When  a  home  is  blessed  with  peace,  and  order,  and  love, 
and  prosperity,  there  never  is  any  dispute  about  the  rela¬ 
tive  merit  of  the  parents.  It  may  be  taken  for  certain  that 
both  have  lovingly  labored  “  to  dress  and  keep  ”  their  sweet 
garden  from  the  approach  of  evil. 


FORGES  WHICH  CREATE  THE  CHRISTIAN  HOME. 


33 


To  secure  this  harmony  of  action,  and  the  union  of  hearts 
from  which  it  liows,  all  the  religious  helps  instituted  by 
the  Creator  from  the  beginning,  and  afterward  perfected  by 
Christ,  are  intended.  There  can  be  in  the  home  neither 
happiness,  nor  peace,  nor  prosperity,  nor  the  blessing  of 
children  growing  up  in  the  fear  of  God,  nor  the  respect  of 
friends  or  neighbors,  without  this  deep,  true,  holy,  and 
lasting  love  of  husband  for  wife  and  of  wife  for  husband. 
We  are  not  treating  here  of  the  qualities  which  young 
people,  while  yet  they  are  free,  should  consider  in  the  life- 
companions  they  are  about  to  unite  to  themselves  in  matri¬ 
mony.  We  suppose  the  marriage  to  be  an  accomplished 
fact,  and  are  solely  concerned,  at  the  present  moment,  with 
the  necessity  and  the  means  of  preserving,  fostering,  in¬ 
creasing,  and  perfecting  that  union  of  two  souls  devoted 
eternally  to  each  other,  without  which  the  married  state  is 
likely  to  be  little  else  than  a  life-long  bondage,  and  with 
which  it  is  certain  to  be  a  life-long  joy,  even  when  the  path 
to  be  trodden  lies  through  hardship  and  struggle. 

The  Husband's  distinctive  Part  in  the  joint  work. 

Manly  hearts  would  not  believe  us  or  forgive  us,  were  we 
not  to  declare  at  the  outset,  that  the  task  of  the  husband, 
as  the  head  of  the  family  and  the  stronger  by  nature,  con¬ 
sists  in  doing  all  that  devoted  love  can  do  to  cherish  the 
God-given  treasure  of  a  true  wifely  heart. 

To  cherish  the  Love  of  a  Perfect  Woman. 

Let  us  discuss  the  only  two  suppositions  to  be  admitted 
here  : — of  a  virgin  heart  kept  by  God’s  angels  for  the  des¬ 
tined  husband,  like  a  gem  of  incomparable  beauty  and  price 
hidden  away  and  locked  up  by  a  king  for  the  bridal  day  of 
his  son  and  heir  ; — or  of  a  heart  either  unloving,  or  occupied 
with  the  love  of  another. 

In  the  first  case,  and  presuming  the  husband  to  be  the 
Christian  man  that  he  ought  to  be,  governed  by  conscience, 
3 


34 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


and  seeking  in  liis  choice  of  a  companion  the  fulfillment  of 
the  divine  pleasure, — then  is  the  treasure  of  love  bestowed 
on  him  by  the  great  sacrament  of  matrimony,  exactly  de¬ 
scribed  in  the  beautiful  sentiments  attributed  by  a  modern 
poet  to  old  Catholic  Portugal : 

“  How  do  I  love  tliee?  Let  me  count  the  ways. 

I  love  thee  to  the  depth  and  breadth  and  height 
My  soul  can  reach,  when  feeling  out  of  sight 
For  the  ends  of  Being  and  Ideal  Grace. 

I  love  thee  to  the  level  of  every  day’s 
Most  quiet  need,  by  sun  and  candle  light. 

I  love  thee  freely,  as  men  strive  for  Right ; 

I  love  thee  purely,  as  they  turn  from  Praise  ; 

I  love  thee  with  the  Passion  put  to  use 

In  my  old  griefs,  and  with  my  childhood’s  faith  ; 

I  love  thee  with  a  love  I  seemed  to  lose 

With  my  lost  saints,  — I  love  thee  with  the  breath, 

Smiles,  tears,  of  all  my  life  ! — and  if  God  choose, 

I  shall  but  love  thee  better  after  death.”  * 

Catholic  moralists  teach, — and  it  is  the  sentiment  of  the 
Church, — that  just  as  men  are  divinely  destined  and  called 
to  the  priesthood,  and  the  life  of  higher  perfection  under  re¬ 
ligious  rule,  even  so  are  they  destined  and  called  to  the  mar¬ 
ried  state.  In  each  of  these  conditions  true  holiness  of  life 
may  be  attained, — nay,  it  is  the  will  of  Him  for  whose  glory 
all  conditions  of  life  are  bound  to  labor,  that  the  man  of  the 
world  should  be  spotless  and  perfect  in  his  state,  as  much 
as  the  priest  in  his  sacred  station,  or  the  monk  in  his  clois¬ 
ter.  And  to  enable  each  one  to  fulfill  the  end  of  his  proper 
vocation,  our  Father  and  God  has  set  apart  for  every  one 
of  us  an  ever-present  and  ever-ready  storehouse  of  graces, 
out  of  which  the  divine  hand  daily  and  hourly,  all  through 
life,  bestows  on  each  a  measure  limited  only  by  the  reci¬ 
pient’  s  own  previous  generosity  in  the  use  of  the  heavenly 
gift. 

Of  the  graces  thus  prepared  for  the  use  of  every  man 
assuming  the  responsible  duties  of  wedded  life,  the  greatest 
is  the  undivided  love  of  a  true  woman.  To  the  gift  which 


*  Mrs.  Browning’s  “Translations  from  the  Portuguese.” 


FORCES  WHICH  CREATE  THE  CHRISTIAN  HOME.  35 

such  a  one  bestows  on  you,  in  putting  her  hand  in  yours  at 
the  altar,  what  is  there  on  earth  to  be  compared  in  value? 
You,  too,  can  say  with  the  supposed  lover  of  the  land  of  St. 
Elizabeth : 

“  What  can  I  give  thee  back,  0  liberal 
And  princely  giver  .  .  .  who  hast  brought  the  gold 
And  purple  of  thine  heart,  unstained,  untold. 

And  laid  them  on  the  outside  of  the  wall 
For  such  as  I  to  take  or  leave  withal, 

In  unexpected  largesse  ?  ”  * 

Guilt  and  Folly  of  not  Prizing  such  a  Gift. 

Yes,  this  is  more  than  a  royal  gift.  For  at  royal  bridals, 
though  the  East  and  the  West  may  have  been  ransacked 
for  the  jewels  which  the  bridegroom  bestows  on  his  bride, 
what  are  they  to  the  love  which  does  not  go  with  them,  or 
which,  when  bestowed,  is  above  all  the  gems  that  earth  and 
ocean  can  yield  ? 

Do  men,  even  when  most  assured  of  possessing  this  trea¬ 
sure,  act  as  if  they  prized  it  at  its  worth  ?  Do  they,  from 
their  bridal  day  and  ever  after,  make  it  their  duty,  a  most 
sacred  duty  to  God  and  to  their  dear  companion,  to  study 
to  cherish  and  increase  this  love  in  the  tender  and  sensitive 
heart  of  the  woman  they  have  chosen  from  out  all  woman¬ 
kind  ?  There  are  so  many  men,  and  they  calling  them¬ 
selves  Christian  men,  who,  once  married,  seem  to  think  that 
they  may  feel  secure  of  their  companion’s  love,  and  that 
no  neglect  of  theirs,  no  lack  of  manly  virtue,  can  lose  them 
the  love  of  that  heart  so  trustfully  given  to  them. 

Experience  is  there,  however, — a  sad  and  often  tragic  ex¬ 
perience,  to  prove  all  too  eloquently  how  a  husband’s  neg¬ 
lect  chills  and  blights  the  healthiest  growth  of  wifely  affec¬ 
tion,  how  the  betrayal  of  unmanly  weaknesses  soon  shatters 
the  ideal  young  love  had  been  worshiping,  and  how  ill- 
usage  but  too  often  converts  the  deepest  and  purest  conju¬ 
gal  devotion  into  a  hatred  still  deeper  and  undying. 


*  The  same. 


36 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Hallowed  mutual  Lorn  all-powerful  for  good. 

Love  is  the  mightiest  force  of  the  moral  world,  all-mighty 
for  good  when  directed  toward  the  august  purposes  or¬ 
dained  by  Him  who  is  the  Creator  both  of  the  world  of  spi¬ 
rits  and  of  the  world  of  matter,  and  who  delights  in  aiding 
the  workings  of  the  human  heart  much  more  than  in  con¬ 
trolling  the  winds  and  the  waves,  the  play  of  the  lightning 
or  the  pathways  of  the  light,  much  more  even  than  in  regu¬ 
lating  the  vast  and  mysterious  movements  of  the  starry  uni¬ 
verse.  There  never  yet  existed  two  young  hearts  kept  pure 
for  each  other  by  the  Great  Author  of  our  nature,  and 
united  for  life-long  companionship  through  the  most  an¬ 
cient  and  sacred  of  His  ordinances,  whom  He  did  not  destine 
to  be  to  each  other  a  source  of  purest  bliss,  a  mutual  power 
toward  all  excellence,  and  the  parents  of  a  race  of  Godlike 
men  and  women,  if  they  would •  themselves  only  be  faithful 
to  the  light  that  is  in  them  ! 

Here  lies  the  secret  of  so  much  sin  and  misery,  of  so  many 
scandals  among  every  class  of  society,  of  the  ruin  of  so 
many  homes  and  the  breaking  of  so  many  hearts.  The 
’mighty  force  of  lawful  love,  is  placed,  like  every  other 
most  precious  gift  of  God  to  man,  in  the  keeping  and  under 
the  control  of  man’ s  free  will.  He  is  left  free  by  his  Maker, 
to  use  the  gift  or  neglect  it,  to  apply  it  to  the  divinest  pur¬ 
poses  or  to  pervert  it  to  the  worst. 

Man  has  but  a  limited  control  of  the  mighty  elementary 
forces  of  nature.  The  storms  which  sport  with  his  best-built 
ships  on  the  ocean,  the  inundations  which  yearly  devastate 
his  fields  and  wreck  his  habitation,  the  earthquake-power 
that  levels  the  proudest  cities  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye, 
and  ingulfs  whole  continents  in  the  deep,  the  very  fire  given 
him  for  so  many  useful  and  salutary  ends,  all  show  him 
continually  that  he  is  not  their  master.  Nay,  more  than 
that,  the  very  steam  which  he  generates  and  utilizes  as  the 
agent  of  his  most  triumphant  progress,  annihilates  him  at 
every  turn,  as  if  to  convince  him  that  his  most  glorious 


THE  SECRET  OF  MAN'S  STRENGTH. 


37 


conquests  can  never  be  achieved  over  elements  that  he  was 
not  born  to  subdue. 

The  strength  of  man  and  his  cliiefest  glory  lie  in  his  mas¬ 
tery  over  his  own  soul,  and  in  his  power  of  binding  to  him¬ 
self  the  souls  of  others.  His  worst  sin  consists  in  the  neglect 
of  subduing  his  own  evil  passions,  of  cultivating  and  devel¬ 
oping  the  good  that  is  in  himself ;  in  the  neglect  of  his  duties 
toward  the  souls  knit  to  his  own,  given  him  to  guard  from 
evil,  to  advance  in  all  good,  to  love  as  God  has  loved  us, 
by  continual  devotion  and  self-sacrifice  in  favor  of  the 
beloved. 

Man  responsible  for  the  Fall  in  Eden. 

The  story  of  the  two  first  human  beings  ought  to  be  a 
lesson  full  of  warning  and  most  wholesome  instruction  for 
every  human  pair,  who  start  in  life  together  under  the  sanc¬ 
tion  of  God’s  blessing.  No, — Eve  was  not  the  author  of  the 
transgression  that  ruined  human  happiness  and  sullied 
human  life  at  their  very  origin.  Eve  was  not  the  head  of 
the  race  ;  she  was  derived  from  Adam  and  created  for  him  ; 
we  stood  not  or  fell  not  in  her  and  through  her.  Man  was 
the  head ;  in  him  it  was  decreed  that  the  entire  race  should 
stand  or  fall.  When  the  woman  whom  he  was  bound  to 
guard  and  watch  over  far  more  jealously  and  diligently 
than  over  his  beauteous  domain  of  Paradise,  fell,  in  great 
part,  it  may  be,  because  he  was  neither  diligent  nor  watchful 
in  his  charge  over  her  unsuspecting  innocence  and  compara¬ 
tive  helplessness, — we  had  not  yet  fallen.  Her  sin  was  her 
own,  and  was  not  to  be  imputed  to  us.  Had  Adam  con¬ 
tinued  innocent,  then  had  we  not  forfeited  the  sublime  rank 
to  which  in  him  all  human  nature  had  been  elevated.  He 
fell,  tempted,  to  be  sure,  by  his  now  guilty  companion ;  but 
he  fell  freely,  with  his  eyes  open,  with  a  full  knowledge  of 
the  consequences  of  his  disobedience,  with  a  lively  sense  of 
the  immense  debt  he  owed  to  his  Creator  and  Benefactor, 
and  he  fell  to  gratify  his  own  sensuality.  No  other  motive 
is  assigned  in  Scripture. 

His  fall,  utterly  unjustifiable,  and  utterly  disgraceful  as 


38 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


it  was,  dragged  us  all  down ;  and  the  ruin  caused  thereby 
required  the  coming  down  to  our  level  in  our  assumed  flesh 
and  blood  of  that  Eternal  Son,  through  whom  all  things 
had  been  made,  and  by  whom  alone  the  ruin  of  all  things 
could  be  repaired. 

Even  so  now,  let  us  not  close  our  eyes  to  the  luminous 
fact, — the  ruin  of  the  Home  comes  through  man:  woman’s 
baneful  agency  is  but  indirect,  accidental,  at  the  very  most, 
secondary  or  subsidiary.  The  head  of  the  Home  is  man , 
the  head  of  society  is  man ;  the  destroyer  of  the  moral 
world  is  man  ;  its  restoration  and  salvation  must  be  through 
woman. 

At  any  rate,  certain  it  is  that  at  the  head  of  the  moral 
order  here  below  is  man  ;  when  he  fails,  then  there  follows 
disorder  everywhere. 

Is  this  preaching  \  We  know  not ;  we  would  fain  think 
it  is  not.  Yet  so  earnest  are  we  under  the  pressure  of  our 
great  conviction,  that  we  must  set  the  truth  forth  as  it 
forces  itself  upon  us. 

Marts  Responsibility  for  Home- Lore  and  Happiness. 

In  the  home  of  the  lowliest  laboring-man,  to  which  he 
has  just  brought  the  woman  of  his  choice,  there  is  present 
in  the  force  of  her  pure,  maiden  love,  and  in  the  added 
force  of  God’ s  grace,  given  to  these  two  souls,  to  love  each 
other  withal  and  to  do  their  life-work,  a  power  infinite  in 
its  virtue  and  eternal  in  its  duration,  provided  the  husband 
understand  the  trust  which  he  accepts  therein,  and  freely 
use  it  with  the  divine  assistance. 

For,  as  surely  as  God  is  the  Creator  and  Life-giver,  so 
surely  does  He  place  his  power  and  Himself  at  the  disposal 
of  that  young  husband  for  the  fulfillment  of  his  task,  for 
the  cherishing  of  the  twin-soul  wedded  to  him,  and  destined 
to  be  his  helpmate  in  dressing  and  keeping  their  paradise. 
This  lesson  is  addressed  to  Catholic  men  especially,  who  are 
not  unacquainted  with  the  doctrine  of  their  Church  on  the 
nature  of  the  various  sacraments,  and  on  the  virtue  of  that 


THE  SECRET  OF  MAN’S  STRENGTH. 


39 


mighty  aid  from  on  high  toward  all  onr  good  actions  that 
we  call  grace. 

At  every  instant,  when  that  aid  is  vouchsafed  to  our 
mind  by  the  light  given  it  to  see  the  good  to  be  done,  and 
to  our  will  by  the  interior  energy  to  follow  where  that  light 
leads, — God  himself  is  with  the  light  he  pours  on  our  path 
and  in  the  powerful  impulse  which  urges  the  heart  to  go 
forward. 


Perpetual  Devotion  enjoined  on  Young  Husbands. 

It  is  His  will,  then,  that  the  young  husband  should  cher¬ 
ish  with  infinite  care  and  tenderness  that  most  precious 
flower  of  love,  which  is  to  be,  under  God,  the  very  soul  of 
his  happiness  and  his  power  for  good  till  his  dying  day. 
His  plain  duty,  therefore,  from  that  day  forth,  is  to  make 
“  to-morrow”  even  more  delightful  to  his  companion  than 
“  to-day  to  make  his  love  for  her,  his  respect  for  her,  his 
delicate  and  even  watchful  care  of  her,  his  chivalrous  devo¬ 
tion  to  her  (for  all  that  is  true  love),  like  the  stream,  which 
is  but  a  tiny  ripple  of  water  at  its  birth,  but  deepens  and 
widens  ever  as  it  flows  onward  to  the  sea. 

Listen  to  the  soul  of  pure  conjugal  love  as  a  Protestant 
supposed  Catholic  women  to  conceive  it ;  and  learn  to  mea¬ 
sure  your  own  upon  its  exquisite  tenderness  and  delicacy. 

i 

“  I  feel  that  I  shall  stand 
Henceforward  in  thy  shadow.  Nevermore 
Alone  upon  the  threshold  of  my  door 
Of  individual  life,  I  shall  command 
The  uses  of  my  life,  nor  lift  my  hand 
Serenely  in  the  sunshine  as  before. 

Without  the  sense  of  that  which  I  forbore,  .  .  . 

Thy  touch  upon  the  palm.  The  widest  land 
Doom  takes  to  part  us,  leaves  thy  heart  in  mine 
With  pulses  that  beat  double.'  What  I  do 
And  what  I  dream  include  thee,  as  the  wine 
Must  taste  of  its  own  grapes.  And  when  I  sue 
God  for  myself,  He  hears  that  name  of  thine, 

And  sees  within  my  eyes  the  tears  of  two.” 


40 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


We  must  return  later  to  this  subject,  full  as  it  is  of  most 
precious  teachings, — and  say  at  present  one  word  about  the 
other  alternative  of  the  young  bridegroom’s  lot, — that  he 
has  found,  namely,  in  his  bride  anything  save  the  ideal  his 
love  had  dreamed  of. 

How  Mental  Inferiority  in  the  Wife  is  Remedied . 

What  is  to  be  done  when  a  husband  is  rudely  startled 
from  his  dream  of  life-long  companionship  with  a  woman 
endowed  with  all  the  virtues  and  perfections  his  fancy  had 
painted,  to  find  that  he  is  wedded  to  the  very  opposite  de¬ 
fects  or  vices  \ 

It  is  a  terrible  question  to  answer.  And  yet  is  it  not  an 
unfrequent  one.  There  are  but  few  guides  of  souls  that 
have  not  to  help  a  disappointed  and  despairing  husband 
toward  finding  a  practical  solution  to  this  formidable  and 
seemingly  insuperable  difficulty.  For  non-Catholics  the 
ready  solution  would  be  in  divorce  and  the  consequent 
formation  of  new  ties.  With  Catholics  there  can  be  no 
thought  of  divorce.  The  remedy  is  only  to  be  found  in  the 
sacramental  grace  itself,  and  in  the  heroic  virtues  which  its 
unfailing  efficacy  enables  the  young  husband  to  practice 
both  in  reforming  what  is  deformed  in  his  wife’ s  character 
and  temper,  and  in  raising  higher  in  his  own  heart  and  life 
the  level  of  all  goodness  and  forbearance. 

Example. 

In  a  charming  series  of  sketches  from  actual  life,  pub¬ 
lished  by  a  gifted  American  lady  some  thirty  years  ago,* 
is  related  an  instance  apposite  to  our  present  purpose,  of 
what  may  b'e  considered  a  most  painful  deficiency  in  a 
wife. 

A  young  French  nobleman,  temporarily  residing  in  New 
York,  fell  in  love  with  and  married  a  lovely  Irish  girl,  who 
was  simply  a  seamstress.  He  was  unutterably  shocked, 


*  “  Portraits  of  My  Married  Friends,  ”  by  Uncle  Ben. 


WHAT  A  HUSBAND' 8  LOVE  CAN  REPAIR. 


41 


soon  after  their  union,  to  discover  that  his  young  wife, 
who  had  won  and  tilled  his  heart  much  more  even  by  the 
beauty  of  her  soul  than  by  the  uncommon  charms  of  her 
person,  was  absolutely  destitute  of  all  literary  education. 
She  did  not  know  the  first  letters  of  the  alphabet !  That 
he  did  not  find  this  out  before  marriage,  was  due  to  his 
very  slight  acquaintance  with  the  English  language,  as  well 
as  to  the  correctness  with  which  she  spoke  it  and  the  grace 
and  refinement  of  her  manners,  all  of  which  she  had  acquired 
in  the  family  of  “  Uncle  Ben.” 

This  discovery,  though  it  cast  a  shadow  on  their  wedded 
bliss,  did  not  estrange  the  husband  from  his  innocent, 
beautiful,  and  devoted  wife.  He  neither  upbraided  her 
with  her  ignorance,  nor  accused  her  of  willfully  deceiving 
him.  With  admirable  sense  he  set  about  remedying  the 
deficiency  of  his  companion,  and  was  heartily  seconded  by 
herself,  she  beihg  at  bottom  a  woman  of  excellent  judgment 
and  character. 

To  avoid  the  possibility  of  exposing  her  ignorance  to  the 
eyes  of  his  friends  or  of  the  social  world,  he  gave  up  all 
society,  associated  with  his  business  connections  only  out¬ 
side  of  his  own  home,  and  so  far  as  was  strictly  needful. 
He  surrounded  her  in  their  lodgings  with  all  the  elegances 
and  luxuries  that  could  elevate  her  taste,  and  he  taught  her 
their  value.  With  his  aid  and  that  of  her  former  kind  mis¬ 
tress’s  daughters,  she  soon  learned  to  read  and  write.  These 
imperfect  beginnings  filled  her  with  unspeakable  delight 
and  a  keen  desire  of  further  improvement.  The  gentle 
husband  encouraged  every  effort,  trusting  to  the  natural 
talent  and  innate  refinement  of  his  dear  one  for  a  complete 
realization  in  time  of  all  that  he  anticipated  for  her. 

Meanwhile  a  daughter  was  born  to  him,  who  promised  to 
be  as  beautiful  as  her  mother.  The  latter,  however,  now 
that  she  had  a  child  to  rear,  felt  so  deeply  the  deficiencies 
of  her  own  education,  that  she  must  have  been  completely 
disheartened  but  for  the  sweet  words  of  comfort  and  en¬ 
couragement  of  her  noble  husband. 

Alas !  theirs  was  but  a  brief  union.  He  had  received 


42 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


a  distinguished  scientific  training,  was  a  graduate  of  the 
Polytechnic  School  of  Paris,  and  had  an  active  share  in  the 
construction  of  the  Croton  Aqueduct  and  Reservoir.  A 
fever  contracted  by  exposure  carried  him  off,  consoled,  at 
his  last  hours,  by  the  angelic  devotion  of  his  young  wife, 
and  the  ministrations  of  their  common  faith. 

It  became  needful  that  she  should  go  to  France,  whither 
her  father-in-law  pressingly  invited  her,  offering  her  his 
home  as  her  own.  But  how  was  she  to  conceal  from  him 
and  his  aristocratic  connections  her  humiliating  ignorance 
of  all  things  which  a  lady  is  supposed  to  know  \  In  this 
extremity  u Uncle  Ben”  and  her  daughters  became  her 
efficient  aids.  She  devoted,  under  their  care,  the  short  in¬ 
terval  before  her  departure  to  the  study  of  what  was  most 
needful,  her  progress  being  proportioned  to  her  fervor  for 
self-improvement. 

In  France,  she  made  a  most  favorable  impression  on  the 
aged  and  widowed  nobleman,  wdio  loved  her  dearly  for  the 
sake  of  his  only  son,  as  well  as  for  her  own.  A  French 
master  was  called  in  to  teach  her  the  language  of  her  new 
home,  of  which  she  scarcely  understood  a  word.  She  was 
filled  with  inexpressible  terror  lest  he  should  find  out  her 
ignorance,  and  speak  of  it  to  the  family,  to  the  housekeeper, 
especially,  who  had  hailed  her  arrival  with  any  feelings  but 
those  of  welcome,  and  who  was  all  too  anxious  to  humble 
the  admired  and  lovely  stranger.  So  the  French  master  was 
admitted  by  the  latter  to  her  secret,  and  won  over  to  her 
interests.  The  neighboring  Convent  of  the  Ladies  of  the 
Sacred  Heart  afforded  her  not  only  a  much  needed  refuge 
in  her  bereavement,  but  gave  her  enlightened  friends  in  the 
fresh  troubles  that  beset  her  path. 

To  her  kind  instructresses  in  New  York,  however,  she  had 
chiefly  recourse  for  help.  They  literally  educated  her  by 
letter.  We  have  her  letters  to  them  now  before  us,  from 
the  first  to  the  last,  and  our  readers  would  be  astonished, 
in  perusing  them,  to'  see  how  much  was  to  be  learned  not 
only  in  the  most  elementary  branches  of  education,  by  one 
who  had  learned  nothing  in  childhood  or  girlhood,  but  also 


WHAT  A  HUSBAND'S  LOVE  CAN  REPAIR. 


43 


in  the  requirements  of  social  life  in  the  highest  ranks  of  a 
great  civilized  country. 

In  less  than  a  year  she  learned  to  speak  and  write  French 
with  ease.  To  those  around  her  she  now  had  the  air  and 
the  manners  of  a  lady  of  culture  ;  and,  in  truth,  her  natural 
talents  aided  by  her  own  most  conscientious  efforts,  had  pro¬ 
duced  most  striking  results. 

At  this  juncture  some  English  friends  of  her  father-in-law 
were  invited  to  spend  a  season  with  his  family,  and  Kate 
was  the  only  person  there  who  could  entertain  them.  Fancy 
the  poor  thing’ s  agony  lest  she  should  again  be  found  out 
and  betrayed  by  her  visitors.  Then  began  a  new  series  of 
appeals  to  her  New  York  friends  for  instruction  on  every 
imaginable  subject,  from  degrees  of  longitude  and  latitude 
to  the  nature  and  uses  of  the  thermometer  and  barometer. 
Nothing  could  daunt  the  intrepid  learner,  till  she  had  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  amassing  an  amount  of  varied  information  that 
set  her  at  ease  in  every  society  she  went  into. 

She  was  still  in  the  summer  of  her  beauty  and  grace,  when 
her  hand  was  solicited  by  a  man  of  birth  and  fortune  ;  and 
here  we  leave  her,  with  the  question :  What  would  have 
become  of  herself  and  her  first  husband,  had  she  not  found 
in  him  that  high-born  sense  of  self-respect,  which  did  not 
permit  him  to  allow  the  outside  world  to  know  the  secrets 
of  his  home  and  his  heart  %  or,  if  his  true  love  for  his  com¬ 
panion  and  his  gentle  forbearance  had  not  encouraged  and 
aided  her  to  lift  herself  up  to  his  level  ? 

Difficulty  of  dealing  with  Wea7c  Women. 

Bitter  as  must  be  a  man’s  disappointment,  when  he  finds 
himself  wedded  for  life  to  a  woman  in  every  way  inferior  to 
himself  and  to  the  sphere  in  which  he  moves,  the  deficiency, 
as  we  have  just  seen,  can  be  remedied  where  he  is  kind  and 
patient,  and  she  is  willing  and  eager  to  learn.  It  is  a  rich 
nature  totally  uncultivated  or  overrun  by  the  weeds  of  neg¬ 
lect  :  the  weeds  can  be  plucked  up,  and  the  rich  soil  made 
to  bear  a  glorious  crop  by  patient  and  careful  husbandry. 


44 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


But  what  if  the  wife  resemble  the  landes  of  Brittany, 
where  there  is  only  a  few  inches  of  arable  earth,  cold  and 
wet,  on  the  underlying  granite,  and  where  nothing  but  furze 
and  barren  heaths  can  grow  \  What  if  the  soil  be  the  cold, 
naked  rock,  or  the  barren  sand  of  the  wilderness  ? 

All  comparisons  here,  if  taken  in  their  literal  sense  to  con¬ 
vey  the  exact  truth,  must  mislead  the  reader.  There  is  no 
human  soul  (we  are  not  here  treating  of  idiots)  incapable  of 
culture  ;  and  we  shall  see  presently  how  the  patient,  indus¬ 
trious,  and  gentle  skill  of  a  true  man,  aided  by  the  unfail¬ 
ing  grace  of  the  Creator,  can  work  miracles  in  the  natures 
that  appear  stricken  with  hopeless  sterility.  Nevertheless, 
as  we  must  present  the  difficulty  to  the  reader  in  its  real 
magnitude,  let  us  see  what  are  these  weak  womanly  natures 
out  of  which  one  might  think  nothing  could  be  made,  or 
these  perverse  natures,  which  can  no  more  be  made  to  bear 
wholesome  fruit  than  the  bramble  can  be  made  to  bear  figs, 
or  the  furze  or  heath  be  made  sweet  food  for  cattle. 

The  ancestor  of  an  English  statesman  at  present  very 
prominent  in  European  politics,  warned  his  son,  three  cen¬ 
turies  ago,  in  these  words  :  “  Thou  shalt  find  there  is  no¬ 
thing  so  irksome  in  life  as  a  female  fool.” 

“ Female  Fools  ” — what  they  are. 

There  are  women,  certainly,  who  can  be  fitly  described  in 
no  other  words  ;  pretty  in  face,  it  may  be,  but  silly,  empty- 
headed,  lazy,  idle,  and  as  incapable  of  serious  thought  and 
sustained  exertion,  as  mercury  is  of  the  temper  of  steel. 
These  are  weak  women,  or  the  “  female  fools  ”  of  old  Lord 
Burleigh. 

Such  women  are  the  product  of  a  defective  education, — 
whether  given  at  home  by  an  incapable  mother,  or  at  one  of 
these  schools  where  girls,  like  nails  in  a  nail-factory,  are  all 
made  exactly  after  the  same  fashion,  without  regard  to  natu¬ 
ral  disposition  or  future  avocations.  But  how  happens  it, 
that  sensible  men,  with  their  eyes  open,  choose  such  com¬ 
panions  as  these  ? 


HOW  A  FOOLISH  CHOICE  IS  REMEDIED. 


45 


The  mistake  made  in  the  selection  is  but  too  often  to  be 
laid  to  the  husband’s  account.  The  headlong  passion  which 
is  so  apt  to  be  caught  by  a  handsome  face,  and  does  not 
stop  to  ask  if  the  intellectual  and  moral  qualities  corre¬ 
spond  to  face  and  figure,  if  the  practical  training  in  all  that 
pertains  to  the  management  of  a  household  has  not  been 
neglected,  or  sacrificed  to  the  few  flimsy  accomplishments 
acquired  in  a  boarding  school, — all  this  he  must  blame  him¬ 
self  for.  The  Church  is  so  supernaturally  wise  in  the  rules 
which  she  lays  down  for  the  guidance  of  young  people 
about  to  contract  the  weighty  obligations  of  matrimony ! 
She  will  have  them  prepare  themselves  by  prayer,  by  the 
reception  of  the  Sacraments,  by  purity  of  soul,  by  the  most 
sacred  self-respect  and  modesty,  to  obtain  the  divine  light 
on  the  course  they  are  going  to  pursue.  The  fundamental 
and  far-reaching  maxim  impressed  upon  all  who  are  delibe¬ 
rating  on  the  choice  of  a  calling  in  life,  or,  having  chosen 
it,  are  selecting  the  best  means  of  filling  its  duties,  is,  that 
God’s  will  must  be  sought  before  and  above  everything, 
and  that  to  it  our  will  and  inclinations  must  be  subordi¬ 
nated. 

Men  who  choose  them ,  Greater  Fools. 

\  • 

It  is  impossible, — where  God-fearing  young  people  have 
been  taught,  in  preparing  for  marriage,  or  in  the  choice  of 
their  companions  for  life,  to  implore  light  to  know  the  di¬ 
vine  will,  and  where  they  have  prayed  fervently  for  such 
light,  kept  their  souls  pure  to  receive  it,  and  their  hearts 
free  to  follow  it, — that  God  should  not  direct  them  aright 
and  guard  them  against  the  fatal  mistake  of  such  a  choice 
as  we  are  now  censuring. 

Those  who  are  true  to  their  conscience,  true  to  the  light 
within  them,  and  careful  to  seek  the  divine  will  in  the  mo¬ 
mentous  matter  of  marriage,  are  but  the  very  few  even 
among  our  Catholic  youth  ;  the  immense  majority  rush 
into  matrimony  blindly,  without  a  thought  of  God,  and  in¬ 
tent  only  on  following  the  impulse  of  passion  or  the  voice 
of  worldly  interest. 


46 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


We  care  not  to  insist  at  length,  upon  this  delicate  matter. 
Only,  we  ask  young  men,  who  have  neglected  the  divine 
guidance,  when  such  mighty  motives  should  have  induced 
them  to  seek  it,  whether  they  have  not  themselves  to  blame 
for  making  a  fool’ s  choice  ?  Let  not  the  sentiment  of  self- 
condemnation,  however,  become  either  discouragement  or 
supineness.  You  have  discovered  your  error, — all  too  com¬ 
mon  a  one,  in  our  day  ;  now  set  yourself  manfully  to  re¬ 
trieve  it. 

How  such  Wives  can  be  Educated. 

But  how?  How  is  it  possible  to  transform  a  “ female 
fool”  into  a  sensible  woman ?  Can  these  empty  heads  be 
ever  tilled  with  useful  knowledge  ?  Can  silliness  be  made 
serious  ?  or  inveterate  indolence  be  stimulated  into  habits  of 
wholesome  activity  and  profitable  labor  ?  Can  the  whole 
character  of  a  soul,  hitherto  neglected,  be  changed  \ 

Most  assuredly, — with  His  assistance  who  is  ever  first  to 
prompt  us  to  every  generous  resolution,  and  ever  by  our 
side  to  sustain  us  while  carrying  it  out, — and  with  the  help 
of  our  own  quiet  and  persevering  energy  in  cooperating 
with  that  ever-present  goodness. 

Man!  s  Strength  made  to  support  Woman!  s  Weakness . 

In  the  first  place,  see  to  it  that  you  keep  your  disappoint¬ 
ment  to  yourself.  Let  neither  word  nor  look  of  yours  be¬ 
tray  even  to  your  companion,  that  you  are  conscious  of  any 
deficiency  in  her.  If  she  loves  you  truly,  then  you  have  in 
the  fullness  of  her  affection  and  in  the  trust  she  reposes  in 
you,  one  of  the  most  powerful  means  of  effecting  your  pur¬ 
pose.  Do  not  inquire  whence  her  “  weakness,” — her  soft¬ 
ness,  indolence,  incapacity, — have  arisen.  Weakness  needs 
to  be  sustained  by  strength.  You  are  strong,  and  must 
prop  up  the  weak  one,  that  is  henceforward  to  lean  on  you 
alone.  The  graceful  creepers  of  our  Southern  forests  re¬ 
ceive  from  the  lordly  trees  to  which  they  cling,  not  only 


THE  MISTAKE  NOBLY  REPAIRED. 


47 


support  but  sustenance.  Many  of  them  derive  their  nour¬ 
ishment  entirely  from  the  trunk  on  which  they  live. 

It  is  God’s  ordinance  that  the  husband  should  impart  to 
his  wedded  wife  not  only  the  strength  which  supplements 
her  weakness,  but  the  living  energy  that  enables  her  to 
bear  abundant  fruits  of  every  womanly  virtue  and  graceful 
accomplishment. 

We  have  known  instances  where  husbands  have  suc¬ 
ceeded,  by  the  silent  but  eloquent  lessons  of  their  own 
example,  in  teaching  their  wives  to  be  orderly,  industri¬ 
ous,  energetic,  model  housewives,  mistresses,  and  mothers, 
— where  by  gently  stimulating  womanly  pride,  they  have 
made  them  so  repair  all  the  evil  habits  of  early  training,  as 
to  become  most  companionable  in  society,  as  well  as  most 
efficient  helpmates  at  home.  In  some  of  these  we  have 
known  a  husband  to  be  most  ably  assisted  by  his  mother  or 
sister, — though  it  is  not  often  that  a  weak  wife  will  accept 
the  influence  of  an  accomplished  mother-in-law,  or  of  a 
clever  sister-in-law. 

The  truly  Christian  forbearance  and  patient  industry  on 
the  part  of  a  husband,  which  we  here  inculcate,  was  most 
ably  seconded  by  his  mother  in  a  case  that  deserves  especial 
mention. 

A  Noble  Example  of  such  Transformation. 

A  young  lawyer  of  good  family  and  great  promise  had 
been  smitten,  during  a  vacation  spent  at  a  fashionable 
watering-place,  with  the  girlish  beauty  and  artlessness  of  a 
lady  to  whom  he  was  introduced,  and  she,  on  her  side,  was 
not  less  taken  by  the  manly  grace  and  evident  goodness  of 
the  gentleman.  His  parents  were  living  in  a  distant  State, 
and  he  did  not  think  it  necessary  to  consult  them,  having  a 
handsome  income  of  his  own  with  the  fairest  prospects  of 
success  in  his  profession.  His  wish  had  ever  been  to  find  a 
wife  uniting  true  goodness  and  purity  to  personal  beauty  ; 
and  she  had  been  taught  by  her  mother  to  prefer  to  all 
others  a  young  man  of  her  own  faith  whose  past  life 


48 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


afforded  every  assurance  of  unblemished  virtue.  The  young 
people  thought  they  had  found  their  ideal  in  each  other, 
sought  each  other’s  company,  became  speedily  engaged, 
and  were  married  after  less  than  a  a month’s  acquaint¬ 
ance,  the  parents  of  the  bride  alone  assisting  at  the  nup¬ 
tials. 

During  his  brief  wedding-tour,  the  bridegroom  discov¬ 
ered,  to  his  utter  dismay,  that  he  had  married  a  beautiful 
woman,  indeed,  but  that  what  he  had  mistaken  for  artless¬ 
ness  was  silliness,  and  that  his  wife,  though  unacquainted 
with  evil,  was  totally  deficient  in  practical  sense,  as  well  as 
in  solid  accomplishments  of  any  kind.  The  blushing  timid¬ 
ity  of  the  beautiful  girl  which  had  first  attracted  his  atten¬ 
tion  and  won  his  sympathy,  he  found,  on  a  nearer  view,  to 
be  the  self-conscious  effort  of  a  girl  allowed  to  grow  up  in 
uncontrolled  ignorance  and  laziness,  and  who  now  shrank 
from  public  observation.  She  was  sensitive  and  not  with¬ 
out  a  certain  pride.  This  was  to  prove  her  salvation. 

He  had  contracted,  under  the  discipline  of  his  excellent 
mother,  the  habit  of  monthly  confession  and  communion. 
The  haste  with  which  their  nuptials  had  been  celebrated  not 
having  permitted  them  to  do  more  than  make  a  very  unsatis¬ 
factory  confession,  he  profited  by  their  stay  in  Philadelphia 
over  Sunday  to  prepare  himself  for  holy  communion,  and 
had  no  difficulty  in  persuading  his  wife  to  do  the  same. 
Fortunately  for  him, — as  he  afterward  said, — they  both 
applied  to  the  venerable  Bishop  Kenrick  ;  and  to  him  the  dis¬ 
appointed  bridegrom  opened  his  whole  heart,  accusing  him¬ 
self  bitterly  of  the  haste  with  which  he  had  acted  in  choos¬ 
ing  his  companion,  of  having  allowed  his  judgment  to  be 
misled  by  the  charms  of  a  fair  young  face,  of  having  neg¬ 
lected  to  consult  either  of  his  parents  before  pledging  his 
troth  to  an  utter  stranger,  and,  worse  than  all,  of  not  hav¬ 
ing  prayed  to  God  for  light  and  guidance.  Indeed,  he  con¬ 
fessed,  he  had  been  afraid  to  pray,  lest  some  secret  inspira¬ 
tion  from  on  high  should  thwart  his  hope  of  possessing 
without  delay  a  prize  so  fascinating  to  the  outward  sense. 
He  disclosed  his  disappointment  and  his  fears  for  the  future 


TRUE  PRIESTLY  WISDOM. 


49 


to  a  fatherly  heart  most  able  and  most  ready  to  give  him 
timely  advice. 

The  young  man  was  bidden  never  to  make  known  to  any 
person  but  his  mother  the  weakness  and  utter  incapacity  of 
his  bride.  He  was  to  love  and  cherish  her,  to  show  her, 
both  in  their  own  greatest  privacy  and  before  others,  every 
mark  of  honor  and  respect,  laboring  meanwhile  to  associate 
her  in  all  his  own  private  studies,  pursuits,  and  recreations ; 
he  was  to  get  her,  as  soon  as  possible,  a  house  of  her  own, 
and  to  take  to  all  appearance  unbounded  delight  in  super¬ 
intending  with  her  its  upholstering,  decoration,  and  man¬ 
agement.  In  a  word,  he  was  to  teach  her  what  and  how  to 
do,  while  seeming  to  be  only  interested  in  seeing  her  at 
work. 

That  he  was,  at  first,  and  even  for  a  long  time,  but  very 
partially  successful,  we  are  bound  to  say ;  that  he  suc¬ 
ceeded  in  making  her  at  length  a  wife  after  his  own  heart, 
we  cannot  affirm  ;  still  God  did  crown  his  patience  and  for¬ 
titude  with  results  he  could  not  dare  to  hope  for  during  the 
first  years  of  his  married  life. 

Her  silliness,  inefficiency,  and  sad  lack  of  mental  cultiva¬ 
tion  were  to  him  the  cause  of  daily  and  hourly  mortifica¬ 
tion.  He  never  knew  when  she  would  say  or  do  something 
unseemly.  Indeed,  she  was  almost  certain  to  say  and  do  the 
wrong  thing,  when  she  was  most  anxious  to  say  and  do  the 
right.  Yet  her  husband  heroically  kept  his  resolution  of 
never  snubbing  her  or  of  betraying  before  others  his  hu¬ 
miliation  and  annoyance. 

Share  of  the  Mother -in- Law. 

It  so  happened  that  when  the  young  husband  arrived  at 
his  parents’  home,  his  mother  was  prostrated  by  a  long  and 
tedious  illness.  She  saw  at  a  glance  what  a  mistake  her 
son  had  made,  and  neither  she  nor  his  father  ever  ventured 
to  utter  one  word  of  reproach.  They  read  in  his  looks  how 
keen  was  his  disappointment,  and  understood  from  his  ad¬ 
mirable  behavior  toward  his  wife,  that  he  had  determined 
4 


50 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


to  repair  his  fault  by  unremitting  devotion  to  her  comfort 
and  improvement. 

The  mother  thanked  God  fervently  for  this,  and  with  the 
instinct  of  a  true  woman  and  a  true  mother,  she  resolved  to 
win  the  heart  of  her  daughter-in-law.  She  would  show  a 
preference  for  her  company  above  that  of  her  own  daugh¬ 
ters  ;  she  professed  to  feel  better  each  time  the  timid,  blun¬ 
dering  stranger  conversed  with  her  or  ministered  to  her 
comfort.  Every  flower  she  brought  to  the  sick-room  was 
placed  on  the  table  within  reach  of  the  invalid.  Every  little 
article  coming  from  the  bride’s  hand  was  made  much  of 
and  displayed  conspicuously.  Thus  was  the  latter  power¬ 
fully  attracted  to  the  sufferer. 

A  True  Mother ’  s  Wisdom. 

Meanwhile  the  young  couple  had  been  preparing  their 
own  residence,  the  mother-in-law  being  consulted  with  a 
childish  delight  on  every  detail  pertaining  to  the  furniture 
and  arrangement.  When  her  health  was  so  far  improved 
as  to  permit  her  doing  so,  she  was  prevailed  upon  by  her 
children  to  pay  them  a  visit ;  and,  once  in  the  house,  she 
was  kept  perforce  by  its  mistress,  who  devoted  herself  to 
her  in  earnest.  This  circumstance  was  a  most  providential 
one  for  the  new  home.  The  little  silly  wife, — thanks  to  the 
joint  but  skillfully  concealed  efforts  of  the  sick  mother  and 
her  daughters, — was  initiated  into  all  the  mysteries  of 
house-keeping,  and  trained  to  preside  at  her  own  table,  to 
receive  the  most  brilliant  and  numerous  company,  and  thus 
to  do  the  honors  of  her  husband’ s  house  with  as  few  mis¬ 
takes  as  possible. 

When  afterward  left  alone  to  her  own  resources,  her  pride 
was  stimulated  to  keep  everything  in  the  beautiful  order  es¬ 
tablished  by  her  mother-in-law, — her  husband  all  the  while 
secretly  aiding  his  companion  in  her  laborious  effort  at 
system  and  regularity. 

To  be  sure,  there  were  cloudy  days  in  these  first  years  of 
their  union.  But  there  was  also  sunshine.  The  outside  world. 


THIS  TRUE  PRIESTLY  WISDOM  REWARDED. 


51 


never  slow  at  guessing,  and  guessing  correctly,  where  lie  the 
difficulties  of  young  married  life, — had  too  manyamusing 
anecdotes  to  tell  about  the  queer  blunders  of  the  brilliant 
lawyer’s  not  very  brilliant  companion.  Few  there  were, 
however,  who  did  not  respect  him  sincerely  for  his  chival¬ 
rous  devotion  to  her,  his  constant  deference  to  her  every 
wish,  and  wonder,  as  well,  at  the  marked  improvement  in 
her  manners  and  her  conversation.  Everybody  believed 
them  most  happy  in  each  other  ;  and  he  certainly  never 
allowed  even  her  to  suspect  that  he  was  not  the  most  blessed 
of  husbands. 

The  Noble  Husband ’  s  Reward. 


He  rose  steadily  in  his  noble  profession, — and  as  he  rose, 
he  lifted  with  him  to  his  own  level  the  weak,  dependent 
creature,  who  now  looked  up  to  him  with  a  love  that  almost 
amounted  to  adoration.  The  children  born  to  her  were 
reared  with  infinite  care.  Both  parents  drew  all  their 
strength,  as  well  as  their  chief  happiness  in  life,  from  their 
habits  ,  of  sincere  piety.  Though  they  were  wealthy,  their 
life  was  one  of  generous  self-denial,  their  home,  their  heart, 
and  their  hand  being  ever  open  to  distress  and  the  need  of 
all  less  favored  than  themselves.  How  could  God  refuse  to 
bless  their  efforts  in  rearing  children  worthy  of  Him  ? 

The  self-sacrificing  sense  of  duty  which  had  sustained 
the  husband  through  so  many  years  of  trial  was  crowned 
with  a  heroic  death  during  the  first  years  of  our  great  civil 
war.  His  conduct  from  the  hour  that  he  awoke  disap¬ 
pointed  from  his  dream  of  early  love,  till  he  parted  volun¬ 
tarily  with  his  wife  and  children  at  the  call  of  his  country, 
was  that  of  the  true  man  and  the  true  Christian.  He,  his 
mother,  sisters,  and  wife,  followed  simply  in  what  they  did 
and  bore  and  forbore,  the  time-honored  rules  of  Catholic 
morality.  You  will  say,  perchance, — this  was  genuine 
good  sense,  as  well  as  enlightened  piety.  We  shall  not 
gainsay  it.  The  supernatural  wisdom  of  the  Gospel  only 
perfects  our  nature  in  its  views  of  duty  and  its  generosity 
in  living  up  to  it.  The  Catholic  man  need  only  be  faithful 


52 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


to  the  teachings  of  his  Great  Mother  to  be  the  model  hus¬ 
band,  the  loving  and  devoted  father,  and  the  heroic  patriot, 
as  well.  Of  every  true  son  of  that  Mother,  in  life  as  well 
as  in  death,  it  must  always  be  said  : 

“  His  life  was  gentle  ;  and  tlie  elements 
So  mixed  in  him  that  Nature  might  stand  up, 

And  say  to  all  the  world,  This  was  a  man  !  ”  * 

What  may  be  done  with  the  Vicious . 

It  is  when  a  husband  is  wedded  to  perverseness  of  temper 
or  disposition,  or,  still  more,  when  he  is  appalled  by  dis¬ 
covering  vicious  habits  where  he  had  expected  to  find  every 
womanly  virtue, — that  there  is  need  of  all  the  strength  and 
fortitude  of  true  Christian  manhood. 

Nor  is  it  easy  to  say  who  has  the  heaviest  cross  to  bear, 
— the  husband  tied  to  a  woman  blameless,  indeed,  so  far  as 
moral  purity  is  concerned,  but  otherwise  unsociable  and  un¬ 
governable, — or  the  man  who  has  brought  vice  to  rule  his 
home. 

With  the  misfortune  of  the  latter, — worthy  of  the  help¬ 
ful  sympathy  of  angels  and  men,  we  can  venture  only  to 
deal  briefly.  We  have  known  good  men,  at  least  in  the 
judgment  of  the  world  and  of  their  own  family,  afflicted 
with  this  irreparable  calamity.  Of  course,  where  such  a 
union  is  contracted  without  any  pretense  of  ignoring  the 
antecedents  of  the  wife,  the  unworthly  husband  deserves 
no  commiseration.  Should  he  apply,  when  the  conse¬ 
quences  of  the  choice  he  has  wittingly  made  press  hard 
upon  him,  to  the  guide  of  consciences  for  comfort  and  ad¬ 
vice,  no  true  priest  will  refuse  either  the  one  or  the  other. 
It  is  a  poor  soul, — perhaps  two  souls, — to  be  saved  from 
perdition, — or  a  great  scandal  which  must  be  prevented 
from  becoming  greater, — and  so  the  minister  of  mercy  will 
deal  with  these  souls  in  extreme  need  in  the  spirit  of  his 
divine  Master  and  Model. 


*  Sliakspeare,  “Julius  Caesar,”  act  v.,  scene  v 


THE  YOUNG  HUSBAND'S  TRUE  FRIEND. 


53 


Infinite  Prudence  and  Generosity  needed. 

When,  on  the  other  hand,  the  husband’s  sad  mishap  is 
known  to  him  alone,  or  so  secret  that  there  is  but  little 
danger  of  its  being  blown  abroad,  and  when  the  sick  soul 
with  whom  his  life  is  linked  is  willing  to  be  healed,  then  the 
path  to  be  pursued  is  a  plain  one.  The  unhappy  husband 
is  bound  to  save  his  own  honor,  and  bound,  as  a  Christian, 
to  aid  in  healing  and  saving  a  soul.  To  no  one  living, — 
save  only  in  so  far  as  he  may  have  to  consult  his  spiritual 
guide, — ought  he  to  lay  bare  the  wound  in  his  own  heart  or 
the  sin  of  his  companion.  A  confessor  eminent  as  well  for 
his  learning  and  experience  as  for  his  piety,  will  be  for 
such  a  man  the  friend  of  friends,  the  most  precious  aid  ever 
sent  to  mortal  man  in  his  direst  need  by  Him  who,  being 
our  Father,  is  ever  anxious  most  lovingly  to  provide  for  our 
pressing  wants. 

Let  a  husband,  circumstanced  in  this  way,  cast  about  for 
such  a  man  of  God,  and  his  honor  as  well  as  his  happiness 
(so  far  as  happiness  is  here  possible)  will  be  safe  in  his 
keeping.  From  such  a  friend  he  will  learn  what  course  to 
follow  in  dealing  with  the  guilty  wife,  how  he  is  to  temper 
gentleness  with  austerity,  and  how  far  any  show  of  affec¬ 
tion  may  serve  to  mitigate  or  to  sweeten  the  bitterness 
worse  than  death  of  a  guilty  heart  striving  to  recover  itself. 

When  He,  who  is  the  Infinite  Majesty  and  the  unap¬ 
proachable  Holiness,  descended  to  our  level,  becoming  one 
of  a  fallen,  crime-covered  race,  that  in  his  merciful  human 
arms  He  might  lift  us  up  with  Him  to  His  own  divine  rank, 
how  did  He  teach  every  man  of  us  to  deal  with  the  souls 
that  had  fallen  lowest  and  wandered  farthest  from  inno¬ 
cence  and  right  % 

See  Him  at  the  table  of  the  Pharisee,  surrounded  by  the 
proud  censorious  sectarian  friends  of  his  host,  and  observe 
how  yonder  woman,  noted  throughout  the  city  for  her 
sinful  life,  approaches  the  Master  stealthily, — but  oh !  so 
trustfully  and  so  reverently !  It  is  sin,  self-conscious, 


54 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


wretched,  humbled  to  the  dust,  seeking  to  lay  its  intoler¬ 
able  burden  at  the  feet  of  God,  and  drawn  toward  His  pres¬ 
ent,  visible  Mercy  with  the  united  forces  of  its  own  misery 
and  His  unbounded  helpfulness.  How  she  weeps  at  these 
blessed  feet !  How  sweet  are  the  tears  which  well  up  from 
the  bitter  depths  in  her  soul !  Then  the  long  tresses  are 
cast  loose  to  wipe  away  from  His  feet  the  traces  of  her 
grief,  as  if  it  had  left  a  stain  behind  !  And  the  irresistible 
impulse  of  the  new-born  gratitude  is  to  touch  with  her  lips 
these  same  feet  that  had  traveled  so  far  to  seek  her  soul ! 

If  it  be  true, — and  the  most  august  and  venerable  author¬ 
ities  induce  the  pious  mind  to  believe  it, — that  it  was  this 
same  “sinner”  who  followed  her  Benefactor  to  the  Cross, 
who  stood  with  His  Mother  beneath  its  dreadful  shadow, 
amid  the  terrors  of  the  earthquake  and  the  darkness,  the 
threats,  the  violence,  the  blasphemies,  and  mockeries  of 
the  brutal  crowd  ;  who  watched  by  His  remains,  and  waited 
near  his  sepulcher,  when  only  one  man  among  the  chosen 
Twelve,  and  one  only  from  among  the  hundreds  of  his  dis¬ 
ciples,  dared  to  render  the  last  sad  honors  to  the  glorious 
Head  ; — then  we  know  what  repentant  love  can  do,  and 
what  divine  generosity  can  fill  a  heart  renovated  by  God- 
given  sorrow,  and  overflow  in  a  life  redeemed  from  shame 
by  forgiveness  and  a  love  proportioned  to  the  mercy  shown. 

This  must  be  the  eternal  model  held  out  to  manly  pity 
while  dealing  with  the  erring* — with  those  especially  who 
have  the  nearest  claims  on  one’s  affections. 

See  how  mercifully  that  most  loving  Kindness  shields  the 
poor  penitent  at  His  feet  from  the  prurient  curiosity  and 
pitiless  judgment  of  the  host  and  his  uncharitable  circle  of 
guests.  He  exalts  the  heroic  faith  of  that  heart-stricken 
one,  immeasurably  above  the  scant  courtesy  of  the  Phari¬ 
see  and  his  household.  ‘ 4 1  entered  into  thy  house  ;  thou 
gavest  me  no  water  for  my  feet :  but  she  with  tears  hath 
washed  my  feet,  and  with  her  hairs  hath  wiped  them.  Thou 
gavest  me  jlo  kiss  ;  but  she,  since  she  came  in  hath  not 
ceased  to  kiss  my  feet.” 

If  the  soul  which  reads  this  page  is  one  which  God  has 


THE  DIVINE  EXEMPLAR. 


55 


stamped  with  the  nobleness  of  true  manhood,  then  may  we 
be  dispensed  from  further  dwelling  on  a  subject  so  full  of 
subtle  danger  to  the  inexperienced.  We  who  need  forgive¬ 
ness  and  are  not  sure  of  deserving  it,  pitiless  that  we  are 
toward  the  erring,  would  do  well  to  ponder  these  sentiments 
of  a  womanly  heart  well  tried  by  suffering : 

“  Two  sayings  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  heat 
Like  pulses  in  the  Church’s  brow  and  breast ; 

And  by  them  we  find  rest  in  our  unrest. 

And  heart-deep  in  salt  tears,  do  yet  entreat 
God’s  fellowship,  as  if  on  heavenly  seat. 

The  first  is  Jesus  Wept,  wherein  is  pressed 
Full  many  a  sobbing  face  that  drops  its  best 
And  sweetest  waters  on  the  record  sweet ; 

And  one  is,  where  the  Christ  denied  and  scorned 
Looked  upon  Peter.  Oh  !  to  render  plain, 

By  help  of  having  loved  a  little  and  mourned. 

That,  look  of  sovereign  love  and  sovereign  pain 
Which  he  who  could  not  sin  yet  suffered,  turned 
On  him  who  could  reject  but  not  sustain  !  ” 

Oil !  manly  hearts,  capable  of  every  divine  sentiment  and 
Godlike  deed,  do  not  “reject”  Him  in  the  persons  of  his 
most  needy  ones  ;  but  learn  to  lift  up,  and  strengthen  and 
“  sustain,”  those  dearest  to  his  mercy,  because  most  in  need 
of  it, — and  what  may  you  not  hope  from  Him  \ 

How  to  Deal  with  Perverse  Wives. 

With  mere  perversity  of  disposition  and  temper,  it  is 
even  harder  to  deal  than  with  the  fallen  and  guilty.  The 
soul  gently,  mercifully,  and  tenderly  dealt  with  by  forgive¬ 
ness,  and  the  generous  aid  bestowed  toward  newness  of 
life, — feels  prompted  by  all  the  noblest  instincts  of  its  nature 
to  be  humble  and  reverent  and  docile  in  its  demeanor  toward 
its  helpmate  and  physician. 

Not  so  with  that  perversity  which  has  its  roots  in  pride 
and  utter  selfishness.  Pride,  its  parent,  has  never  taught 
it  to  respect  others  or  to  yield  to  them  in  aught ;  and  selfish¬ 
ness,  which  is  its  nurse,  lias  accustomed  its  bantling  to  con¬ 
sider  nothing  but  its  own  wants  and  caprices. 


56 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM . 


One  man’s  noble  bnt  utterly  wretched  life  is  now  before 
us,  a  life  open  to  many  not  only  in  its  public  merits,  bnt  in 
its  domestic  griefs. 

His  was  a  nature  as  innocent,  as  guileless  as  a  babe’s, 
giving  out  the  light  and  warmth  of  his  great  soul  as  freely, 
as  unreservedly  as  the  sun  distributes  its  beams.  From  his 
destitute  boyhood  and  struggling  youth  upward  to  the  close 
of  his  most  useful  and  honored  life,  that  rich  nature  of  his 
continued  to  glow,  to  enlighten,  to  cheer  others  forward  in 
every  noble  pursuit.  And  all  that, — in  spite  of  the  young, 
beautiful,  but  perverse  companion,  who  made  his  home  dark 
and  cheerless  by  her  ungovernable  temper,  and  starved  a 
heart  which  yearned  for  love  and  home-comfort. 

Why  these  Types  of  Women  are  mentioned .  • 

How  many  such  wives  are  to  be  found  in  all  classes? 
How  often  is  the  home  of  the  rich  man,  whose  wealth  and 
position  are  the  reward  of  a  whole  life  of  unceasing  applica¬ 
tion  to  business,  rendered  unendurable  by  such  perverse¬ 
ness  as  the  above !  And  how  many  sober,  hard-working, 
and  noble-minded  mechanics  and  laboring-men,  are  driven 
to  the  tavern,  to  intemperance,  and  to  ruin  temporal  and 
eternal,  by  these  domestic  furies,  who  have  never  learned 
to  govern  either  their  temper  or  their  tongue  ! 

Are  we  saying  this  to  excuse  or  cloak  over  the  sins  of 
the  men  in  the  household, — husbands,  sons,  or  brothers? 
or,  are  we  holding  up  the  infirmities  of  the  weaker  sex  to 
censure,  in  order  to  shield  from  blame  the  vices  of  the  sex 
which  should  ever  be  the  support,  the  guide,  the  model,  of 
wife,  of  daughter,  and  sister  ? 

No,  certainly.  We  are,  like  guides  over  the  snow-fields 
and  passes  of  the  Alps,  only  pointing  out  from  an  eminence, 
the  treacherous  fissures  in  the  ice  where  so  many  unwary 
travelers  have  already  perished,  or  the  precipitous  moun¬ 
tain-slopes  rendered  famous  by  many  a  fatal  mishap.  We 
know  of  countless,  countless  homes  made  unhappy  and  un¬ 
endurable  to  husbands,  sons,  and  daughters,  by  the  un- 


PERVERSE  WIVES— HOW  REFORMED. 


57 


tamed  temper  of  those  who  should  have  been  the  angels  of 
these  homes,  making  them  the  bright,  peaceful,  restful 
places  to  which  their  dear  ones  might  come  after  toil  to  find 
the  sweet  image  of  God’s  Home  on  high.  We  state  the  fact 
simply  in  order  to  address  ourselves  to  the  manly  hearts  in 
whom  we  trust,  and  to  urge  them  by  every  most  powerful 
motive  to  exercise  a  double  share  of  heroism  in  counteract¬ 
ing  the  unavoidable  evil. 

Fortitude  required  to  overcome  Perverseness. 

Marvelous  and  incredible  as  are  the  effects  of  a  noble 
woman’s  patient,  uncomplaining  fortitude  and  unwearied 
industry  in  maintaining  a  home  and  hallowing  it  in  spite  of 
a  husband’s  unthriftiness  and  vice, — there  is  something  still 
more  deserving  of  admiration  in  the  patient  endurance  of 
a  husband  tied  to  a  shiftless  woman  whose  wicked  tongue 
never  tires. 

We  have  known  of  a  family  of  eight  children,  born  of 
such  a  graceless  mother,  and  reared  through  the  saintly 
examples  of  their  father  to  be,  all  of  them,  model  men  and 
women.  The  father  himself,  a  poor  shoemaker,  taught 
every  one  of  his  children  reading  and  writing,  as  well  as  the 
elements  of  Christian  doctrine,  made  them,  from  childhood, 
love  to  share  with  him  his  daily  practices  of  piety,  to  kneel 
with  him  monthly  at  the  Table  of  the  Lamb,  and  to  aid 
him,  as  they  grew  up,  to  make  of  his  home  a  place  so  sweet 
and  so  restful,  that  the  priest  of  the  parish  was  wont  to 
bring  his  friends  there  to  show  them  a  model  Christian 
household.  Two  of  the  sons  learned  their  father’s  trade, 
and  in  course  of  time  his  business  increased  and  brought 
him  far  more  than  plenty.  The  other  boy  became  a  distin¬ 
guished  civil  engineer,  and  three  of  the  girls,  when  we  last 
heard  of  the  family,  had  married  well-to-do  tradesmen,  and 
made  admirable  wives. 

But  what  of  their  mother?  it  will  naturally  be  asked. 
She  died,  stricken  with  paralysis,  after  twenty-one  years  of 
married  life, — a  portly  dame,  who  had  brought  to  her  lius- 


58 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


band  for  dowry  a  "handsome  face,  the  scourge  of  a  tongue 
that  nothing  could  quiet  but  the  icy  hand  of  death,  and  a 
temper  which  neither  the  examples  of  her  husband  and  chil¬ 
dren,  nor  the  exact  performance  of  her  outward  religious 
duties,  could  ever  sweeten.  One  would  think  that  she  had 
been  sent  to  that  household  to  afford  its  inmates  a  per¬ 
petual  occasion  of  practicing  the  sweetest  domestic  virtues. 
Few  among  their  neighbors  and  acquaintances  were  allowed 
to  suspect  the  existence  of  such  shocking  infirmities  in  the 
wife  and  mother. 

The  secret  of  this  true  manhood  in  this  lowly-born  and 
scarcely  educated  craftsman,  was  his  high  sense  of  duty ; 
and  it  was  the  idea  of  duty  which  governed  the  conduct  of 
his  noble  children  toward  their  mother.  The  husband,  do¬ 
cile  to  the  voice  of  his  conscience,  when  on  the  very  thres¬ 
hold  of  his  married  life  he  discovered  his  wife’s  infirmities 
of  judgment,  temper,  and  conduct, — resolved  forthwith  to 
devote  his  life  to  the  one  purpose  of  reforming  her  if  he 
could,  or  of  bearing  with  her,  if  he  could  not.  But,  whether 
he  could  or  not,  he  owed  it  to  God,  he  thought,  that  he 
should  be  master  in  the  house  of  his  own  soul,  and  over¬ 
come  his  wife’s  violence  by  invincible  patience,  and  repair 
the  consequences  of  her  shiftlessness  and  utter  incapacity 
by  his  own  application.  He  loved  her  tenderly  when  he 
sought  and  wooed  her  ;  that  love  survived  to  the  end  in 
spite  of  her  manifold  defects.  And  she,  in  spite  of  that 
other  wrathful  spirit  which  seemed  to  rule  her  own,  never 
ceased  to  love  him  truly.  She  boasted  to  all  who  knew  her 
that  he  was  the  best  of  men,  and  confesssed  herself  unworthy 
of  him.  One  resolution  he  formed  during  the  very  first 
month  of  their  union, — that  he  should  never  taste  intoxi¬ 
cating  drinks  so  long  as  he  lived  ;  and  he  kept  it  sacredly. 
His  sons  found  no  difficulty  in  walking  in  the  footsteps  of 
a  father,  whose  ]ife  in  every  one  of  its  most  secret  details, 
could  bear  the  scrutiny  of  God’s  recording  angel. 

How  could  such  children  help  honoring  their  mother,  and, 
like  their  father,  never  even  among  themselves,  alluding  to 
her  weaknesses  ? 


HOW  THE  BITTER  IS  MADE  SWEET. 


59 


Will  you  say  that  such  examples  are  almost  above  the 
ordinary  strength  of  human  nature?  We  can  only  reply 
that  they  are  in  exact  conformity  with  the  examples  shown 
forth  in  the  Gospel,  and  intended  for  imitation  in  the  ordi¬ 
nary  every-day  life  of  Christian  households.  To  convince 
you  of  this,  wTeigh  well  the  pregnant  teaching  of  the  follow¬ 
ing  chapter. 

The  life  of  a  man  who  is  happily  married  to  a  woman 
after  his  own  heart  and  after  the  heart  of  God  as  well,  is,  de¬ 
spite  the  trials  and  sulferings  incidental  to  the  lot  of  the  best 
and  truest  men, — like  a  safe  and  smooth  voyage  down  our 
great  South  American  streams,  amid  all  the  magnificences 
of  nature.  On  the  contrary,  such  a  life  as  that  at  which 
we  have  been  glancing,  is  a  journey  through  sandy  wastes 
and  treeless  mountain -solitudes,  where  only  pools  of  brack¬ 
ish,  bitter  water  olfer  to  the  wayfarers  any  chance  of  re¬ 
freshment.  Did  not  the  God  who  made  the  whole  earth 
command  the  great  Hebrew  leader  of  old,  as  his  famishing 
people  lay  down  near  such  poisonous  pools  as  these,  to  cast 
into  them  a  wood  which  He  designated,  and  were  not  the 
waters  thereby  made  sweet  and  wholesome  ?  * 

Have  we  Christians,  after  eighteen  centuries  of  Christian 
life,  yet  to  learn  what  is  the  virtue  of  the  Cross  to  sweeten 
what  appears  hopelessly  bitter  in  home-life,  and  the  power 
of  the  Crucified  to  lighten  life’s  most  intolerable  burthen 
for  every  man  who  will  take  up  his  cross  and  follow  Him  ? 

We  bid  the  reader  to  the  study  of  the  following  chapter, 
as  we  would  to  listen  to  the  divinest  harmonies  ever  created 
by  human  genius. 


*  Exodus,  xy.  2?,  24  ;  Numbers,  xxxiii.  8. 


CHAPTER  I V. 


PARADISE,  AS  REALIZED  IN  THE  HOME  OF  THE  TRUE  MAN. 

niXacBpov  TtpoTtvXd  O’  e6t ia$  Ejur/Z, 

X2s  cxdjusvoS  6 ’  ttfsldov  ! 

Oli !  liail,  my  roof -tree  and  threshold  of  my  home. 

How  glad  I  saw  thee  ! 

The  Catholic  Church  attracts  those  who  love  the  simplicity  of  natural  man¬ 
ners,  by  the  harmonies  of  a  restored  creation.  .  .  .  The  Catholic  Religion  is  not 
presented  to  us  as  separated  from  nature,  but  in  conjunction  with  it  forming  a 
grand  whole,  fostering  all  the  domestic  affections  with  manhood,  gentleness, 
liberality,  and  all  the  virtues  which  conduce  to  the  happiness  of  Home,  ban¬ 
ishing  not  more  the  luxuries  which  militate  directly  against  the  social  state  in 
general,  than  the  false  notions  of  spirituality  which  would  interfere  with  the 
free  action  of  the  natural  relations.  For,  as  a  recent  author  says,  the  beauty, 
peace,  unity,  and  truth  of  life  repose  on  that  religious  equilibrium  which  protects 
the  flesh  against  the  pride  of  the  spirit,  and  the  spirit  against  the  invasions  of  the 
flesh.  ...  In  truth,  nothing  is  so  natural  as  Catholicity — nothing  so  full  of 
heart — nothing  so  favorable,  therefore,  to  all  the  sweets  of  Home.  Virgins  and 
boys,  mid-age  and  wrinkled  elders,  soft  infancy  that  nothing  can  but  cry,  all 
are  in  the  secret  of  its  charm.— Kenelm  Henry  Digby. 

Let  it  not  be  thought  that  we  dwell  at  too  great  a  length 
upon  this  notion  of  Home,  and  all  the  duties  and  charities 
inseparably  connected  with  home-life.  When  one  looks 
abroad  upon  the  nations  which  once  constituted  Christen¬ 
dom,  and  examines  seriously  the  causes  of  social  and  politi¬ 
cal  prosperity  or  decay,  this  great  fact  stands  forth  as 
evidently  as  a  bright  beacon-light  in  the  darkness  over  a 
dangerous  reef:  The  strength  or  weakness ,  the  vitality  or 
decadence  of  nations ,  is  to  be  measured  by  the  purity  of 
their  home-life ,  by  their  sacred  regard  for  Home ,  its  au¬ 
thority ,  and  its  sanctities. 


GO 


GUARD  THE  SANCTITY  OF  THE  HOME. 


61 


Take  any  one  people  among  whom  Home, — from  that  of 
ihe  sovereign  or  chief  magistrate  to  the  lowliest  and  poorest 
citizen, — is  protected  by  law,  manners,  and  a  wholesome 
public  opinion,  against  everything  calculated  to  loosen  or  to 
weaken  the  sacredness  of  the  marriage  tie,  the  rights  of  pa¬ 
rental  authority  as  sanctioned  by  the  Christian  law  and  im¬ 
memorial  custom,  or  the  duties  of  filial  love  and  reverence, — 
and  you  will  find  the  nation  distinguished  for  private  worth, 
political  honesty,  and  an  enlightened  love  of  freedom. 

Abuses  there  may  and  will  be  in  the  administration  of 
the  best  human  institutions ;  but  where  the  homes  of  a 
nation  are  sincerely  and  thoroughly  Christian,  public  cor¬ 
ruption  must  find  a  certain  and  most  effective  remedy  in  a 
public  opinion  fed  by  the  purity  and  honesty  of  private 
life. 

The  labor  bestowed  on  describing  the  Home  as  it  ought 
to  be,  and  as  it  still  is  in  many  Christian  lands,  is  surely  a 
labor  well  bestowed,  and  the  pains  taken  to  make  the  de¬ 
scription  of  home-life  so  enchanting,  that  all  may  feel  its 
charm,  must  assuredly  be  blessed  of  God,  the  Author  of  our 
nature  and  the  unwearied  promoter  of  its  highest  welfare. 

Guard  inviolable  the  Sanctity  and  Pr  ivacy  of  the  Home. 

In  the  magnificent  new  countries  in  America,  Asia,  and — 
it  may  be — Africa,  which  Providence  throws  open  to  the 
thrifty  and  over -crowded  populations  of  Europe,  it  is  free 
to  every  man  worthy  of  the  name,  to  build  up  a  home  of 
his  own.  It  was,  and  is  still,  the  boast  of  the  freeman 
living  under  the  common  law  of  England  and  these  United 
States,  that  his  home  was  his  castle,  all  his  own  in  its 
length  and  breadth,  and  as  high  as  the  heavens.  It  must 
be  the  fault  of  a  degenerate  race,  neglectful  of  never-to-be- 
abdicated  rights,  if  the  inviolability  of  their  homes  and  the 
hallowed  privacy  of  family  life,  are  surrendered  into  the 
hands  of  the  policeman  or  given  up  to  the  lawless  curiosity 
of  the  public  press. 

At  any  rate,  no  one  may  deny  that  it  is  free  to  every 


62 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


willing  and  true-hearted  man  to  create  for  himself  a  home 
as  happy,  as  honored,  as  lasting  as  those  visited  in  the 
present  or  past  ages  by  God’ s  richest  blessings. 

Every  such  home  should  be  one  founded  on  God-given 
love.  “No  man  or  woman,”  says  a  Catholic  writer,  “has 
ever  felt  true  love  without  feeling  a  desire  to  become  bet¬ 
ter,  and  to  thank  God  for  His  having  given  therein  a  fore¬ 
taste  of  the  joys  of  heaven.”  * 

“Where  faith  (says  Digby)  has  stamped  its  character  on 
the  maiden’ s  heart,  where  man  is  reminded  of  the  graces  of 
her  whom  he  delights  to  serve,  woman’ s  divine  air  and  her 
countenance,  her  words  and  her  sweet  smile,  can  so  sepa¬ 
rate  him  from  all  evil  influences,  that  no  obstacles  upon  the 
road  to  truth  will  be  able  to  detain  his  feet  from  pressing 
forward  to  embrace  it ;  and  then  hand  in  hand  he  is  led  to 
his  second  home,  where  love  and  truth  made  one  with  it, 
will  remain  with  him  thenceforth  forever.” 

This  is  the  only  sure  foundation  of  the  Home, — a  true 
mutual  love  hallowed  by  the  blessing  of  Him  who  made  the 
human  heart,  and  tempered  by  the  fear  of  His  dread  ma¬ 
jesty.  Of  the  divinely  appointed  means  of  sanctioning 
this  mutual  love,  of  preserving  and  increasing  it  through 
life  and  beyond  the  grave,  we  have  to  speak  elsewhere. 

The  True  Home ,  is  the  True  Love  which  brightens  it. 

As,  however,  we  do  not  here  understand  by  the  word 
“home,”  merely  the  walls  which  inclose  parents  and  chil¬ 
dren,  with  the  roof  which  covers  them,  but  all  the  chari¬ 
ties  and  all  the  sanctities,  which  can  make  of  the  poorest 
laborer’s  fireside  a  heaven  on  earth,  and  without  which 
the  luxurious  mansion  of  the  wealthy  man  or  the  splendid 
palace  of  the  prince,  is  only  a  gorgeous  sepulcher  filled  with 
the  skeletons  and  ghosts  of  dead  hopes, — it  is  both  fitting 
and  necessary  that  we  should  dwell  somewhat  more  in  de¬ 
tail  on  these  home  affections  and  associations. 

To  the  lowliest-born,  as  he  looks  back  across  the  wide 


*  Etudes  sur  les  idees  et  sur  leur  union  au  sein  du  Catholicisms. 


THE  POOR  MAN'S  HOME  RICH  IN  LOVE. 


63 


gulf  of  years  to  liis  native  spot  and  tlie  roof  under  which  he 
passed  his  infancy  and  boyhood,  there  may  arise  memories 
of  a  wealth  of  love  so  surpassing,  of  virtues  and  qualities  so 
ennobling, — that  his  soul  swells  with  unspeakable  gratitude 
and  a  holy  pride  at  the  very  thought,  while  it  evermore 
spurs  him  to  emulate  the  work  of  his  parents,  and  to  sanc¬ 
tify  his  own  home  by  the  same  deeds  of  piety  and  goodness. 
And  how  often  does  it  happen,  that  the  man  born  in  the 
lap  of  luxury  or  reared  amid  the  splendors  and  pleasures 
of  a  court, — finds  his  soul  stirred  by  no  sw~eet  memories  of 
early  love,  by  no  recollections  of  Godlike  goodness  and 
virtue  in  parents,  relatives,  or  early  acquaintance !  How 
many  hearts  have  starved  and  pined  for  want  of  the  love 
lavished  on  the  child  of  the  cottager  or  the  mechanic  ! 
How  many  souls,  nobly  born  and  nobly  gifted,  have  been 
degraded,  poisoned,  ruined  in  childhood  and  youth  by  the 
profligacy  of  parents,  or  the  systematic  corruption  of  the 
tutors  or  companions  assigned  to  them  ! 

We  know  it  by  experience  and  observation, — there  may 
be  an  imperial  wealth  of  love,  of  tenderness,  of  purity, 
piety,  and  self-sacrificing  heroism,  beneath  the  humble  roof 
of  the  poor  journeyman  mason  or  of  the  hod-carrier  who 
waits  upon  him,  while  the  children  of  a  Louis  XIV.,  or  a 
Frederick  the  Great,  may  never  know  what  fatherly  affec¬ 
tion  or  motherly  tenderness  means. 

The  Poor  Man ’  s  Home  may  be  Rich  in  Love  ;  the  King ’  s, 

Poor. 

Happy  the  man,  in  no  matter  what  station  born,  who,  in 
calling  to  mind  the  home  of  his  childhood  and  the  sw^eet 
and  venerable  images  of  father  and  of  mother, — only  recalls 
in  both  a  united  stream  of  love  and  devotion,  which  bore 
him  along  through  infancy,  boyhood,  and  youth,  as  if  he 
were  lifted  on  the  bosom  of  an  unchanging  flood  of  joy  and 
peace  and  harmony  !  He  cannot  think  of  his  mother  with¬ 
out  feeling  his  heart  melt  within  him  at  the  remembrance 
of  one,  who  was  in  his  eyes  more  than  an  angel, — a  visible 


64 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


embodiment  of  God’s  own  exlianstless  goodness  and  un¬ 
wearied  patience  ;  a  vision  of  gentleness,  devotion,  unvary¬ 
ing  sweetness,  a  love  that  never  slumbered  or  changed  save 
only  to  increase.  And  beside  her  cherished  image  stands 
in  his  soul  that  other  one,  of  his  father, — the  second  sun  of 
his  life,  feeding  with  its  warmth  and  brightness  the  steady 
glow  of  maternal  love.  He  can  only  recollect  the  strong 
man,  sustaining,  inspiring,  cheering  the  wife  of  his  bosom  ; 
aiding  her,  cooperating  with  her  in  the  performance  of 
every  duty  that  made  their  home  bright  or  their  name  dear 
to  the  neighbors ;  carrying  herself  and  her  children  in  his 
strong  arms  and  on  his  loving  heart,  when  the  road  of  life 
was  too  rough  or  too  dangerous  ;  and  singing  in  his  heart 
all  the  while  a  song  more  divine  than  ever  sounded  at 
springtide  through  forest  or  grove  ! 

This,  however,  is  only  a  very  feeble  and  unsatisfactory 
description  of  the  manifold  blessings  and  most  blissful  influ¬ 
ences  arising  from  the  perfect  mutual  love  and  united  life- 
work  of  father  and  mother  in  the  Home.  Where  such  a  close 
union  reigns,  what  is  not  the  happiness  of  the  children  ! 
what  harmony  among  servants  and  dependants  !  what  edifi¬ 
cation  to  the  neighbors !  These  expressions  do  not  at  all 
convey  the  full  truth  as  it  is  in  our  mind,  and  as  we  have 
beheld  it  in  reality. 

God  designed  that  the  creative  power  of  this  love  in  the 
Home  should  resemble  that  of  His  own  unspeakable  char¬ 
ity  in  the  everlasting  kingdom,  that  of  the  sunlight  here 
below. 

This  Love  makes  Home  a  Heaven. 

It  does  indeed  make  the  Home  the  image  of  Heaven.  For 
there  the  infinite  love  which  binds  together  in  one  most 
blissful  being,  life,  and  society,  the  Three  Divine  Persons, 
is  the  same  which  forms  the  bond  of  eternal  affection,  joy, 
and  happiness  of  the  glorious  society  of  angels  and  men, 
united  in  fellowship  with  their  Creator  and  Father.  Even 
while  in  the  flesh,  Ignatius  of  Loyola  was  vouchsafed  what 


TRANSFORMING  POWER  OF  LOVE. 


65 


would  seem  a  glimpse  of  the  beatific  reality  which  is  to  be 
in  the  life  to  come  the  reward  of  faith  practiced  in  this.  He 
was  given  to  see  or  to  understand  so  clearly  the  ineffable 
way  in  which  the  Three  Persons  are  one,  the  Son,  pro¬ 
ceeding  eternally  from  the  Father,  and  the  Holy  Spirit 
from  the  Father  and  the  Son, — that  in  his  case  the  veil  had 
been  withdrawn.  This  extraordinary  favor  would  appear 
to  have  been  granted  in  return  for  the  absolute  generosity 
with  which  the  high-minded  soldier  had  torn  his  heart  away 
from  the  pursuit  of  all  earthly  honor  and  glory,  from  the 
deepest  and  purest  natural  affections,  to  become  in  the  hand 
of  God  a  passive  and  docile  instrument  for  the  mighty  work 
reserved  to  him.  It  was  but  a  glimpse  vouchsafed  him 
into  these  eternal  depths,  in  which  he  beheld  the  three  in¬ 
finite  Persons  like  a  threefold  flow  of  being  and  light  and 
love  springing  evermore  from  the  one  original  fountain,  and 
returning  thither  in  its  irresistible  tide  of  charity,  only  to 
seem  to  overflow  itself,  and  flood  all  the  blessed  society  of 
men  and  angels  with  its  splendors  and  its  ardors. 

How  a  Glimpse  of  the  Eternal  Love  created  Apostles. 

Thenceforth  the  soul  of  Ignatius,  like  a  piece  of  cold  metal 
once  plunged  in  a  vast  kindred  mass  in  fusion,  remained 
for  ever  penetrated,  inflamed,  illumined,  and  transformed 
by  the  glorious  vision.  He  could  not  rest  till  he  had  col¬ 
lected  around  him  a  chosen  band  of  men  like  himself,  com¬ 
municated  to  them  the  light  and  burning  love  which  over¬ 
flowed  in  his  own  soul,  and  sent  them  forth,  like  Francis 
Xavier  and  Peter  Favre,  to  kindle  the  flame  of  God’s  love 
to  the  uttermost  ends  of  the  earth.  Thenceforth,  also,  his 
soul  could  scarcely  bear  its  separation  from  the  blessed 
company  above,  and  from  the  undisturbed  contemplation 
of  that  Divine  Reality,  one  little  glimpse  of  which  had  set 
his  heart  on  fire.  Prayer  and  meditation  became  almost 
his  only  food,  and  so  sweet  was  the  love  which  filled  his 
whole  being,  that  he  wept  unceasingly.  Threatened  with 
the  loss  of  sight,  and  weakened  otherwise  in  body  by  the 
5 


66 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


vision,  which  departed  not  from  his  soul  by  day  or  night, 
he  was  bidden  by  his  physicians  and  his  spiritual  direc¬ 
tor,  to  abstain  from  protracted  contemplation  or  frequent 
thought  of  divine  things  ;  but  as  he  walked  about  his  little 
garden  in  Rome,  the  sight  of  a  single  flower  would  recall 
the  hand  that  made  it,  and  that  uncreated  Beauty  whose 
sight  from  afar  and  through  the  mist  had  ravished  his  soul, 
and  tilled  him  with  yearnings  that  nothing  here  below  could 
appease. 

And  so  this  great  parent  of  so  wide-spread  a  religious 
fami]y  of  priests  and  apostles,  would  draw  each  one  of  his 
children  to  his  own  glowing  heart  and  send  him  forth  all 
aflame  with  the  unappeasable  desire  of  daring,  doing,  and 
accomplishing  what  was  most  heroic  for  the  glory  and  ser¬ 
vice  of  that  Adorable  Majesty. 

Hallowed  Creative  Love  of  a  True  Husband. 

So  it  is  in  a  family  where  the  husband’s  soul  has  been 
touched,  purified,  and  kindled  into  holy  love  by  the  fire  from 
above ;  he  will  communicate  his  fervor  to  the  wife  of  his 
bosom ;  the  two  hearts,  aglow  with  the  same  divine  flame 
of  charity,  will  daily  become  more  and  more  one  in  thought, 
in  feeling,  in  purpose,  in  life.  How  can  they  help  making 
their  children  and  their  servants  like  to  themselves?  How 
can  neighbors,  friends,  relatives  deal  with  them  in  frequent 
intercourse  without  experiencing  the  effects  of  the  super¬ 
natural  ardor  that  surrounds  them  like  an  atmosphere  \ 

Beautiful  Examples  of  Conjugal  Love  and  Home-Bliss. 

We  cannot  pass  away  from  this  consideration  without 
affording  the  reader,  in  illustration  of  the  practical  truth 
set  forth  here,  a  glimpse  into  the  private  correspondence  of 
a  man  of  the  world,  who  united  in  his  own  life  the  rare 
blessedness  of  possessing  a  model  wife  and  an  ideal  home, 
— and  the  twofold  honor  of  belonging  to  a  family  most 
deservedly  dear  to  Catholic  Ireland,  while  becoming  him- 


GLIMPSE  OF  A  TRUE  CHRISTIAN'S  PARADISE. 


67 


self  in  America  a  model  patriot  and  statesman.  The  letter 
from  which  the  following  extract  is  taken  was  written  in 
August,  1842,  eight  years  after  his  union  with  the  wife  of 
his  choice,  and  after  a  literary  enterprise,  which  he  had 
undertaken  from  the  loftiest  motives  of  patriotism  and  re¬ 
ligion,  had  brought  on  himself,  his  companion,  and  his  six 
little  children,  utter  pecuniary  ruin.  His  young  wife,  from 
motives  of  economy  had,  with  his  consent,  retired  for  a  few 
months  to  the  home  of  her  noble  father  several  hundred 
miles  away,  and  daily  received  from  the  busy  lawyer  such 
letters  as  this,  replete  with  the  fervent  piety  and  unfailing 
fortitude  of  the  Christian  : 

‘ 4  How  much  quiet  and  heartfelt  happiness  we  shall  yet 
enjoy  together  with  the  divine  blessing!  We  shall  trust 
everything  in  His  hands.  I  was  never  so  struck  as  I  was 
to-day  with  the  beautiful  passage  in  the  Gospel  for  this 
Sunday.  0  ye  of  little  faith  !  Be  not  solicitous ,  .  .  .  say¬ 
ing ,  Wliat  shall  we  eat  f  or,  What  shall  we  drink  ?  or, 
Wherewith  shall  we  be  clothed  f  For  after  all  these  things 
do  the  heathens  seek.  For  your  Father  knowetli  that  you 
hare  need  of  all  these  things.  Seek  ye  therefore  first  the 
Kingdom  of  God  and  his  justice,  and  all  these  things  shall 
be  added  unto  you.  How  nrnch  of  strength  and  consolation 
is  found  in  these  words !  and  who  that  has  faith  could 
make  these  earthly  wants  a  subject  of  anxiety  or  solici¬ 
tude  ?  How  full  of  affection  and  tenderness  is  this  reproach 
of  our  Saviour,  complaining  that  we  should  doubt  the  kind¬ 
ness  and  care  of  our  Father  who  is  in  heaven !  .  .  .  Our 
Father  knows  our  need!  Let  us  do  our  duty, — seek  the 
reign  of  his  justice  over  us, — and  leave  the  rest  with  Him. 

“I  have  been  filled  with  this  disposition  to-day,  more 
than  I  have  ever  been  before,  thanks  to  the  divine  good¬ 
ness.  ...  I  was  reading  yesterday  in  the  Life  of  St.  Fran¬ 
cis  Xavier,  when  he  beautifully  refers  to  this  truth,  writing 
amid  sufferings  and  dangers  which  no  mere  mortal  strength 
could  endure  among  the  half-barbarous  populations  of  In¬ 
dia.  ‘Believe  me,  my  beloved  brethren,’  he  says,  address¬ 
ing  his  brethren  in  Home,  ‘  it  is  in  general  easy  to  under- 


68 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


stand  the  evangelical  maxim,  that  he  who  will  lose  his  life 
shall  find  it.  But  when  the  moment  of  action  has  come, 
and  when  the  sacrifice  of  life  for  God  is  to  be  really  made, 
oh  !  then,  clear  as  at  other  times  the  meaning  is,  it  becomes 
deeply  obscure  ;  so  deep,  indeed,  that  he  alone  can 
comprehend  it,  to  whom  God,  in  his  mercy,  interprets  it. 
Then  it  is  we  know  how  weak  and  frail  we  are.’  May  God 
grant  that  we  shall  always  comprehend  this  maxim. 

“It  is  enough,  almost,  to  fill  such  a  cowardly,  self-in¬ 
dulgent  sinner  as  I  am,  with  despair  to  contemplate  the 
zeal  and  intense  devotion  of  this  great  apostle.  Indeed,  I 
should  despair,  if  God  did  not  pity  and  sustain  me  with 
hope  that  I  may  yet  strive  more  earnestly  and  effectually 
than  I  have  done  hitherto  in  his  service.  To  speak  to  any 
one  but  you  of  what  passes  thus  in  my  mind,  would  appear, 
perhaps,  an  unseemly  exposure  of  what  had  better  be  kept 
within  one’s  own  breast.  But,  partner  of  my  heart  and 
soul,  partner,  I  hope  and  believe,  of  my  life  for  ever,  I 
communicate  with  you  as  unreservedly  as  I  would  with  my 
own  spirit.  And  I  know  that  I  derive  advantage  from  so 
doing. 

“I  have  thought  much  to-day  of  the  great  anxiety  with 
which  I  regard  all  worldly  matters,  and  I  have  resolved, 
with  the  blessing  of  God,  never  to  let  the  issue  of  any 
worldly  affair,  or  the  opinion  of  the  world,  disturb  me.  I 
will  labor  with  the  same  zeal,  perhaps  with  a  better  zeal, 
for  success  in  all  things  ;  but  without  solicitude  for  the  re¬ 
sult,  or  any  regard  for  the  troubles  and  difficulties  atten¬ 
dant  upon  the  prosecution  of  my  labors. 

“What  a  blessing  it  would  be,  if  I  could  obtain  this 
spirit  from  God  !  The  Gospel  of  this  day  and  some  account 
of  St.  Francis  Xavier  that  I  read  last  evening  have  filled  me 
with  these  thoughts  ;  and  I  beseech  you,  pray,  my  beloved 
angel,  that  they  may  not  be  lost  on  me. 

‘ 4  The  account  of  St.  Francis  Xavier  which  I  read,  was 
contained  in  a  powerful  article  for  the  last  Edinburgh  Re¬ 
view  on  the  Jesuits.  I  shall  send  you  a  couple  of  Tribunes 
(Mr.  Greeley’s  paper)  containing  extracts  from  the  article. 


THE  CROSS  IN  THE  PARADISE. 


69 


When  yon  read  them,  you  will  feel  as  I  did  how  conspicu¬ 
ous  is  the  presence  of  Christ  with  His  Church  in  the  lives 
of  men  of  such  extraordinary  sanctity.  My  sloth  and  cow¬ 
ardice  appear  more  criminal  than  ever  when  I  think  of 
what  sufferings  and  labors  St.  Francis  Xavier  had  to  con¬ 
tend  with ;  and  how  utterly  idle  I  have  been,  how  often  I 
have  procrastinated,  how  often  I  have  turned  aside  from 
the  performance  of  my  ordinary  worldly  duties  through  a 
dread  of  the  labor  which  they  would  require.  May  God 
grant  I  may  keep  the  resolution  I  have  now  formed  to  think 
nothing  of  labor  that  is  a  duty ,  or  that  charity  requires  ! 

“For  you  also,  my  own  love,  and  for  our  dear  children, 
I  implore  the  same  divine  grace.” 

In  very  truth  the  trials  which  beset  the  life  of  this  true¬ 
hearted  man,  gave,  until  his  dying  day,  perpetual  opportu¬ 
nity  of  practicing  the  heroic  devotion  to  duty,  the  perfect 
and  most  loving  conformity  to  the  Divine  Will,  that  char¬ 
acterized  the  great  Apostle  of  India.  To  the  latter,  indeed, 
had  been  given  in  the  midst  of  his  overwhelming  labors,  so 
sweet  a  sense  of  the  divine  presence,  so  inflamed  a  love  of 
the  Master  he  served, — that  by  day,  as  he  passed  through 
the  streets  on  his  apostolic  errand,  the  people  would  behold 
his  face  all  aglow  with  the  interior  fire,  while  from  his  lips 
would  burst  forth  the  rapturous  ejaculation  :  “  O  Most  Holy 
Trinity  !  O  Most  Holy  Trinity  !  ” — as  if  he  were  already  a 
glorified  spirit  gazing  on  the  Unveiled  Essence  on  high  !  At 
night,  when  the  crushing  and  varied  labors  of  the  day  were 
over,  Francis  was  wont  to  withdraw  to  the  silence  of  some 
neighboring  chapel  to  give  vent  to  the  torrent  of  praise 
which  he  could  not  restrain,  or,  frequently,  to  seek  the 
solitude  and  cool  air  of  the  cemetery,  and  there  kneeling, 
and  throwing  open  the  folds  of  his  poor  cassock,  he  would 
bare  his  breast  to  the  night  air,  as  if  to  cool  somewhat 
the  fire  which  consumed  his  heart,  exclaiming  the  while, 
“  Oh  !  not  so  much  sweetness,  not  so  much  sweetness,  dear 
Lord  !  ” 

With  the  good  and  upright  magistrate  whom  we  have 
been  mentioning,  God’s  wise  providence  dealt  otherwise. 


70 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


He,  too,  was  a  man  of  prayer  ;  and,  when  tried  to  the  utmost, 
— as  his  faithful  companion  often  related, — he  would  kneel 
for  hours  in  his  bedchamber  before  an  oratory,  his  arms 
extended  upwards  as  if  on  a  cross,  the  tears  streaming 
down  his  cheeks,  and  his  silent  heart-cries  ascending  to 
heaven  in  praise  and  supplication. 

A  few  days  before  the  date  of  the  letter  quoted  above, 
and  when  his  heart  was  bitterly  assailed  by  undeserved 
calamity,  he  wrote  to  his  wife  as  follows  : 

“I  have  just  risen  from  my  knees,  where  I  have  prayed 
with  tears,  my  loved  wife,  to  the  Almighty  God,  and  to  his 
Blessed  Virgin  Mother,  for  us  both  and  for  our  dear  chil¬ 
dren,  imploring  His  grace  and  guidance  in  doubts  and  diffi¬ 
culties,  and  that  he  would  bring  us  speedily  together  in 
peace,  and  union,  and  health,  and  happiness,  and  His  love. 
I  besought  the  Blessed  Virgin  to  take  us  as  her  children 
and  present  our  hearts  before  Him,  and  beg  of  Him  to  purify 
them  and  strengthen  them  in  all  good  purposes,  to  obtain 
His  aid  in  our  troubles,  and  that  we  may  receive  willingly, 
with  filial  affection  and  submissiveness,  whatever  trials  He 
may  call  upon  us  to  undergo.” 

The  Flame  which  Feeds  a  True  Husband ’  s  Love. 

This,  then,  was  the  flame  in  which  his  heart  and  that  of 
his  companion  ever  sought  to  be  more  and  more  chastened. 
Nine  months  after  their  union  he  could  write  to  her,  on 
receiving  a  letter  from  her : 

“  Never  since  you  left  me  was  I  so  delighted,  so  happy 
as  at  that  moment.  The  contents  of  the  letter,  the  fond, 
affectionate  heart  and  soul  that  breathed  in  every  line  were 
in  no  wise  calculated  to  lesson  my  rapture.  They  stimulated 
it,  rather,  they  added  to  and  strengthened  it.  And  oh  ! 
how  I  longed  for  the  moment  when  I  could  tell  you  of  all  the 
love  that  burns  in  my  soul  for  you !  and  how  worthy  you 
are  of  more,  more,  far  more  than  any  human  heart  can  offer 
for  your  acceptance.  Yes,  my  little  angel,  your  purity, 
your  goodness,  your  unstained  love  are  worth  more  than  all 


TIIE  CROSS  IN  THE  PARADISE. 


71 


the  realms  of  earth,  than*  all  which  Time — the  past,  the  pres¬ 
ent,  and  the  future  of  this  life, — can  offer  to  the  enjoyment 
of  man.  I  feel  humbly  grateful  to  the  Almighty  Hand  that 
has  conferred  on  me  a  treasure  so  pure  and  priceless  !  ’  ’ 

And  farther  on  in  the  same  letter : 

“My  beloved,  good  mother,  how  I  wish  T  were  near  her 
now,  if  my  j)resence  could  be  a  comfort  to  her  !  There  is  a 
bond  of  attachment  between  me  and  my  good  dear  mother  so 
tender,  affectionate  and  reverential,  that  while  there  is  life 
in  me  nothing  can  weaken  or  disturb  it.  You  can  under¬ 
stand,  my  own  gentle,  affectionate  girl,  how  I  must  have 
felt  and  how  I  still  feel  at  having  left  a  mother  to  whom  I 
am  so  firmly  attached,  and  at  a  time  when  she  claimed  my 
help  and  protection.  .  .  .  We  had  all  come  away  from  our 
friends  and  native  land,  and  had  toiled  together  amid  many 
privations.  .  .  .  They  believed  my  presence  to  be  essential 
to  them,  and  to  leave  them  so  circumstanced  was  a  trial  in¬ 
deed.  But  may  God  give  me  the  means  of  showing  them 
that  I  was  not  insensible  to  their  claims.  .  .  . 

“How  much  more  intimate,  easy,  and  natural  do  I  find 
the  communion  between  our  minds  to  be,  than  even  between 
myself  and  my  nearest  relative,  parent,  or  sister.  I  caunot 
write  as  fast  as  the  ideas  come  to  me  when  I  am  writing 
to  you.  I  let  flow  my  whole  mind  at  once,  and  without 
reserve,  when  you  are  the  beloved  object  I  address.  I  need 
not  stop  to  select  words  or  phrases.  I  want  only  to  place 
my  whole  heart  before  you,  and  let  you  read  it.  How 
blessed  and  sacred  indeed  is  the  union  between  us  !  Never 
did  I  at  any  moment  conceive  of  such  a  holy,  limitless  con¬ 
fidence,  such  a  perfect  blending  into  one  of  our  hearts  and 
our  very  being,  as  I  have  felt  to  exist  between  us  since  our 
marriage.  May  God  continue  this  blessing  to  us !  and  I 
feel  that  He  will.  .  .  .” 

These  fervent  protestations  of  conjugal  love  and  of  the 
deep  admiration  on  which  that  love  was  founded,  are  heard 
through  his  correspondence,  year  after  year,  till  his  death, 
like  the  ascending  tones  of  a  litany.  Every  year  and  week 
and  day  seemed  to  reveal  to  the  pure  soul  of  the  husband 


72 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


some  undiscovered  perfection  in  the  wife,  which  heightened 
his  veneration  for  her  as  well  as  his  gratitude  to  Heaven  for 
the  bestowal  of  such  w^orth  on  himself. 

“Dearly  as  I  loved  you,”  he  wrote  toward  the  close  of 
the  first  decade  of  his  married  life, — “much  as  I  esteemed 
you,  good  and  excellent  as  I  believed  you  to  be  before  we 
were  united  for  ever,  yet  I  did  not  then  know  half  your 
purity  and  excellence.  I  often  think  how  little  I  knew,  be¬ 
fore  I  could  call  you  mine,  of  the  gentleness,  the  pure  con¬ 
fiding  affection,  the  devotedness,  the  fortitude,  the  energy, 
the  childlike  innocence,  the  clear  intuitive  perception  of 
truth  and  right,  of  what  is  the  highest  virtue  and  the  highest 
wisdom,  of  the  firmness  in  pursuing  the  course  of  duty,  all 
of  which  constitute  the  character  of  a  true  and  genuine  woman. 

“  I  had  always  formed  the  highest  estimate  of  the  female 
character,  and  had  always  had — I  thank  God  for  it — some 
of  the  best  examples  before  me  ;  but  in  no  other  relation  of 
life,  save  that  of  husband,  can  a  man  see  and  understand, 
intimately  and  without  disguise  or  reserve,  all  the  various 
attributes  and  virtues  of  a  woman’s  heart  and  soul.  And, 
even  in  that  dear  and  holy  relation,  how  often  does  man’s 
sterner  and  more  material  nature  render  him  slow  to  discern, 
appreciate,  or  sympathize  with  the  above  precious  gifts  and 
dispositions,  that  only  require  the  breath  of  love,  with 
words  and  deeds  and  a  heart  of  answering  tenderness,  in 
order  to  be  revealed  to  him  in  all  their  exquisite  delicacy 
and  loveliness. 

“You  are,  thank  God,  my  own  love,  the  model  of  all  this 
excellence  ;  and  it  is  from  the  contemplation  and  intimate 
knowledge  of  your  character,  that  I  have  formed  the  con¬ 
ception  of  what  woman  was  designed  by  her  beneficent 
Creator  to  be.” 

Ay, — there  is  the  indispensable  condition  toward  calling 
forth  the  full  and  magnificent  luxuriance  of  a  true  womanly 
nature, — “  a  heart  of  answering  tenderness .”  This  tender¬ 
ness  is  to  the  development  of  her  womanly  and  wifely  qual¬ 
ities,  what  rain  and  dew  and  sunlight  and  a  congenial  soil 
are  to  the  growth  of  the  tree  or  the  flowering  plant. 


THE  CROSS  IN  THE  PARADISE. 


73 


Nevertheless,  while  surrounding  her  and  her  children 
with  all  the  comforts  and  refinements  within  reach  of  their 
modest  income,  he  believed  it  to  be  conducive  to  her  spi¬ 
ritual  growth  to  encourage  her  oftentimes  to  sacrifice  her 
most  innocent  pleasures  and  gratifications  in  favor  of  the 
poor,  of  some  great  religious  purpose,  or  even  for  the  great 
gain  of  being  in  this  more  Christlike. 

“  I  would  dearly  like’’ — he  wrote — “  that  I  could  make 
this  world  a  fairy -land  to  you,  in  which  no  thought  or  wish 
of  yours  should  remain  ungratified.  It  pains  me  much,  at 
times,  to  be  forced  to  disappoint  your  expectations  and  to 
deny  you  pleasures  that  wealth  enables  so  many  others  in 
your  position  to  enjoy.  And  yet  I  cannot  help  thinking 
that  I  should  do  you  a  grievous  wrong,  were  I  to  suppose 
that  you  would  not  be  more  happy  in  performing  the  duties 
of  a  sensible,  discreet,  affectionate,  and  domestic  wife  and 
mother,  than  when  engaged  in  all  the  gayeties  and  exciting 
pleasures  and  amusements  which  mere  money  can  pur¬ 
chase.  The  temper  of  your  soul  would  lead  you  to  prefer 
your  home-duties,  even  though  at  the  cost  of  sacrifices  and 
deprivations  that  were  very  painful.  I  know  this,  my  dar¬ 
ling  ;  I  have  had,  time  and  again,  the  evidence  of  it  in  your 
daily  life,  and  my  heart  has  duly  appreciated  it.” 

The  True  Foundations  of  the  Home. 

And  thus,  in  these  passages  taken  from  the  inmost  life  of 
a  true  man,  and  destined  never  to  meet  any  other  eye  than 
that  of  his  worshiped  companion, — we  have  laid  before  us 
the  deep,  sacred,  and  safe  foundations  of  the  Christian 
Home, — of  the  Home  as  we  need  it,  as  God  designed  it  and 
still  wills  it,  and  as  it  ever  existed,  hallowed  and  respected 
through  so  many  past  ages, — the  Home  of  our  fathers. 

One  or  two  more  gems  from  the  conjugal  crowns  of  this 
truly  Christian  pair, — and  we  shall  hasten  to  close  this 
chapter.  On  the  twenty-eighth  anniversary  of  their  union, 
during  the  autumn  of  the  first  year  of  our  great  civil  war, 
the  husband  thus  wrote  to  his  absent  wife  : 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


74 

“  Lake  Mahopac,  September  29,  1861. 

“Up  here  in  my  quiet  little  third-story  room,  and  all 
over  the  house  wherever  I  have  been  ;  and  in  the  field,  on 
the  road,  on  the  lake, — looking  abroad  and  around  me,  and 
above  me  and  below  ; — looking  far  away  over  the  woods  and 
the  hills,  and  the  misty  mountains,  or  down  at  the  little 
rivulet  or  the  grass-plot  beneath  me  ; — wherever  I  turned  or 
whatever  I  saw,  whether  speaking  or  silent,  or  alone  or  sur¬ 
rounded  by  others,  I  thought  only  of  you  and  saw  only  you, 

.  .  .  on  this  the  twenty-seventh  anniversary  of  the  day 
when  God  blessed  our  union  and  made  us  one  forever. 

“  I  sighed  with  regret  that  I  could  not  be  with  you  ;  and 
at  every  step  and  turn,  at  every  light  and  shadow  of  the 
landscape,  the  longing  of  my  heart  was  on  my  lips  :  ‘  How 

I  wish  my  darling  wife  was  here  !  How  happy  it  would  be 

if  she  were  with  me !  ’  And  I  sometimes  said  to  E - , 

4  How  often  your  dear  mother  has  looked  at  these  scenes 
with  me  !  and  how  we  used  to  enjoy  them  !  How  I  wish  she 
were  here  to  enjoy  them  now  !  ’ 

4 ‘The  day  was  cool  and  lovely,  and  the  breeze  on  the 
lake  invigorating  ;  so  we  rowed  and  walked  about  a  good 
deal ;  and  I  talked  to  the  children  of  our  anniversary, 
thinking  of  all  the  past  and  the  present,  and  of  all  our  dar¬ 
ling  ones  who  are  with  you,  and  of  dear  F - ■,*  and  of  the 

sweet  beloved  ones  who  are  gone  before  us.  I  told  E - 

it  was  St.  Michael’ s  Hay  ; — that  the  great  Archangel  was 
the  patron  Saint  of  our  marriage.  4  Yes,’ — said  she, — ‘he 
is  the  patron  Saint  of  the  soldier,  the  Archangel  of  battles, 
the  patron  of  those  who  have  to  fight  and  battle  in  the 
world  !  ’ — ‘  Well  then,’ — said  I, — ‘  he  has  had  fitting  clients, 
and  our  Saint  was  well  chosen.  For  we  had  to  battle  with 
the  world  from  the  start,  and  he  has  been,  I  know,  our  good 
Archangel,  our  loving,  watchful,  and  efficient  patron,  fight¬ 
ing  for  us  against  the  Powers  of  Darkness,  against  the 
world  and  all  evil,  and  gaining  for  us  many  a  victory  when 
we  knew  not  how  it  was  done  !  ’  And  so  I  believe  it  to  be, 


*  The  eldest  son,  then  an  officer  of  the  Federal  Army  in  Missouri. 


THE  CROSS  IN  THE  PARADISE. 


75 


my  own  dear  little  wife,  wlio  liave  trodden  with  me  so 
many  perilous  paths  with  such  a  light  cheerful  look  and 
all  the  childlike  trust  and  hope  of  inexperienced  inno¬ 
cence. 

“I  can  see  you  still, — a  little  girl,  almost  a  child  in  your 
unsuspecting  ignorance  of  an  evil  world, — with  a  bright 
glow  on  your  cheek,  walking  or  tripping  lightly  beside  the 
tall  and  strong  man  whom  you  trusted,  over  a  wooded  path 
through  brushwood  and  thorns,  your  face  so  young  and 
bright  and  cheerful, — almost  like  an  angel’s, — a  slight  ex¬ 
pression  of  sudden  pain  sometimes  clouding  it  as  a  thorn 
sharper  than  the  rest  unexpectedly  tore  your  flesh. 

“And,  after  a  long  experience — after  much  travel,  much 
joy  and  brightness,  much  weariness  and  not  unfrequent 
experience  of  sorrow, — the  little  girl  is  seen  to  have  become 
the  wise  and  holy  woman,  patient,  courageous,  and  cheer¬ 
ful  still ;  and,  while  counseling  and  encouraging  her  com¬ 
panion, — the  strong  man, — now  almost  fainting  on  the  road, 
— she  seems  in  his  eyes  more  than  ever  an  angel. 

“With  thoughts  like  these  I  have  been  filled  all  day,  and 
I  have  taken  up  this  note-paper  to  give  expression  to  some 
of  them.  How  deep  and  how  great  is  my  debt  of  gratitude 
to  our  Heavenly  Father  !  ” 

Surely  our  readers  will  be  grateful  to  have  one  short 
glimpse  of  this  noble  husband’s  twin  soul,  and  so  to  hear 
from  out  its  depths  the  echoes  of  these  God-given  harmo¬ 
nies  of  wedded  love  : 

“  A  few  thoughts  on  my  wedding  anniversary,  September 
29,  1866. 

“At  Glen-Ellen. 

“Here,  in  this  lovely  spot,  this  beautiful  valley,  the 
twin- vale  of  my  cherished  native  place, — let  me  call  you 
around  me,  my  loved  ones,  to  look  back  with  me  through 
the  long  vista  that  leads  to  my  wedding-day. 

“  Oh !  how  can  I  describe  to  you  that  home  in  which  I 
learned  all  that  is  good  in  my  heart  I  I  must  close  its 
door, — lest  my  strength  should  fail  me  :  those  who  then 
loved  and  cherished  me  with  such  a  watchful  and  tender 


76 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


care,  have  now  gone  from  my  sight.  Do  they  this  day 
know  my  gratitude  ? 

‘ ‘  Our  wedding-day !  the  day  we  celebrate !  It  had  a 
fickle,  changeful  sky ;  the  dark  clouds  and  rays  of  fair 
promise  intermingled  in  its  skies  like  the  light  and  shade 
of  coming  years  that  lay  before  us  in  the  unknown  future. 

“The  morning  of  that  day  was  cold  and  chilly  as  the 
world’s  charity.  At  its  noonday  the  snow  and  sleet  be¬ 
came  rain,  and  fell  in  showers,  like  the  tears  we  have  both 
since  dropped  in  the  cup  of  chastening  sorrows.  With  its 
evening  came  bright  sunshine, — omen  of  the  glowing  love- 
light  that  floods  every  nook  and  corner  within  our  blessed 
home. 

“  Such  was  our  wedding-day.  And  such  has  been  our  life. 

“  Since  then,  the  day  has  oft  returned.  It  has  come  in 
weal,  and  it  has  come  in  woe — in  woe,  oh  !  how  deep  ! 
And  now  this  blessed  day  comes  in  light ; — not  in  light  un¬ 
clouded,  but  in  the  noonday  sky  of  other  years  when  the 
driving  snow  and  sleet  softened  into  rainbow  showers. 

“  My  darling  husband  !  Chosen  companion  of  my  life  ! 
Beloved  of  my  heart  above  all  others,  and,  next  to  God,  the 
source  of  the  ever-flowing  fountain  of  joy  in  my  soul, — let 
me  on  this  day  renew  to  you  my  vows  of  love  made  in  the 
presence  of  that  dear  home-circle,  when  my  parents  gave 
me  to  your  care.  Let  me  here  promise  to  be  to  you  a  faith¬ 
ful  wife  and  heart-companion  ‘till  death  do  us  part.’ 

“How  well  you  have  kept  your  promise  of  that  day,  my 
beloved  husband ! 

“  Cold  and  bitter  blasts  have  swept  over  us  since  then  ; 
and  how  lovingly  you  have  shielded  me  from  their  fury ! 

“The  icy  chill  of  a  heart  in  agony,  has  been  melted  into 
tears  by  your  consoling  tenderness  and  devotion.  And 
when  has  not  sunshine  been  made  more  bright  by  your 
presence,  my  darling  3 

“My  children!  Oh!  what  visions  of  happiness  rise  be¬ 
fore  me  at  this  call !  My  children  far  and  near  !  Angels  of 
my  earthly  paradise  !  Precious  offerings  of  my  life’s  labor 
for  Heaven’s  acceptance  !  Jewels,  set  by  God ,  in  my  mar- 


THE  CROSS  IN  THE  PARADISE. 


77 


riage  crown !  Yon  are  our  honor,  our  glory,  our  pride,  and 
the  warmth  of  our  hearts  ! 

“Come,  this  day,  nearer,  closer  to  my  arms.  Let  me 
take  you,  each  and  all,  and  lay  you  at  the  feet  of  our  Lord, 
and  ask  Him  to  bless  you  for  your  devoted  love  of  us,  your 
parents.  Thank  Him,  my  children,  that  you  still  have  this 
sweet  sanctuary,  your  parents’  hearts,  in  which  to  rest  you 
with  a  never-failing  security. 

“  I  would  gladly  celebrate  this  day  by  showering  gifts 
upon  you  all,  my  husband  and  my  children.  .  .  .  Out  of 
the  deep  fountains  of  a  wife  and  mother’s  heart  take  for 
yourselves  oceans  of  love.” 

The  Close  and  Crown. 

Little  did  parents  and  children  imagine,  while  enjoying 
the  deep  bliss  of  this  anniversary,  that,  when  another  came 
around,  the  husband  and  father  would  be  no  longer  there, 
— the  model-man  to  all  of  them,  in  the  mirror  of  whose  life 
they  had  ever  seen  reflected  the  noblest  virtues  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  and  the  citizen.  To  him  might  be  applied  in  the  full¬ 
est  sense  what  a  great  and  holy  writer  of  the  fifth  century 
applied  to  an  illustrious  layman  of  his  time : 

“I  have  leisurely  inspected  the  daily  actions  of  this  dis¬ 
tinguished  man,  and  found  them  worthy  of  being  described. 
What  is  the  chief  praise  ? — He  maintains  a  house  in  uncor¬ 
rupted  purity  ;  his  servants  are  useful,  .  .  .  tractable,  po¬ 
lite,  obedient,  and  contented.  His  table  feeds  the  strange 
guest  no  less  than  the  client.  Great  is  his  humanity  ;  but 
greater  still  his  sobriety.  His  mind  is  serious  ;  he  main¬ 
tains  public  faith.  With  all  this,  the  reading  of  the  sacred 
scriptures  is  frequent,  so  that  he  feeds  his  mind  even  at  his 
bodily  repasts.  In  a  new  form  of  life  he  unites  the  gentle¬ 
man  and  the  monk.  .  .  .  Toward  his  household  he  is  neither 
harsh  in  his  manner  of  speech,  nor  disdainful  of  counsel, 
nor  perservering  and  exact  in  detecting  offenses.  He  rules 
those  subject  to  him  not  with  a  domineering  authority,  but 
with  such  gentle  equity,  that  one  might  think,  that  instead 


78 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


of  governing*  his  own  family,  he  was  only  administering  the 
estate  of  another.  Truly,  all  men  of  our  order  (clergymen) 
might  derive  a  most  useful  lesson  from  his  example ;  for, 
without  offense  to  them,  I  must  say  it — I  am  a  warmer  ad¬ 
mirer  of  a  priestlike  layman  than  of  an  unpriestly  cleric.”  * 

How  a  True  Man  should  Choose  his  Companion,  and 

Cultivate  her  Heart. 

Need  it  be  said  here,  that  it  does  not  fall  to  the  lot  of 
every  man,  even  of  very  good  men,  to-  possess  such  a  wife  ? 
The  obvious  answer  must  occur  to  every  serious-minded 
reader  :  The  Church  of  God, — that  is,  God  Himself  through 
the  Church,  prescribes  to  parents  the  utmost  care  and  pru¬ 
dence  in  selecting  companions  for  their  children  about  to  be 
married  ;  while  to  the  children  she  recommends  recourse  to 
prayer,  the  reception  of  the  Sacraments,  the  avoidance  of 
sin,  a  desire  to  fulfill  the  will  of  God  by  making  a  right 
choice, — and,  in  choosing,  a  preference  for  the  gifts  of  mind 
and  heart  and  true  piety  over  the  mere  attractions  of  face 
and  form.  Where  the  desire  to  please  God  and  to  obtain 
such  life-companionship  as  is  best  fitted  to  one’s  spiritual 
welfare  and  solid  happiness,  as  well  as  the  advancement  of 
His  service,  is  the  leading  thought  of  young  man  or  maiden 
preparing  for  matrimony, — there  is  little  danger  but  that 
God  will  direct  them  aright. 

We  must  not,  however,  anticipate  on  what  has  to  be 
treated  fully  in  its  proper  place.  Suffice  it  to  say  at  pres¬ 
ent,  that  even  when  parents  have  solely  consulted  the  Di¬ 
vine  Will  and  the  best  interests  of  their  son  in  choosing  for 
him  or  in  directing  his  choice, — or  even  when  he  has  been 
given  a  woman  endowed  with  all  the  natural  and  super¬ 
natural  graces  that  make  her  a  treasure  beyond  price, — 
much,  very  much  still  remains  for  the  young  husband  to  do 
if  he  would  call  forth  all  the  wealth  of  his  treasure,  and  ap¬ 
ply  it  to  the  best  uses. 

*  Plus  ego  admiror  sacerdotalem  virumquam  sacerdotem. — Sidonius  Appolina- 
ris,  Epistolarum,  1.  iv.  9. 


DRESSING  AND  KEEPING  THE  PARADISE. 


79 


A  ricli  womanly  nature  demands  to  be  known,  to  be 
appreciated,  to  be  developed  by  the  deep  love,  the  ingeni¬ 
ous  tenderness,  the  unfailing  devotion,  the  delicate  and 
respectful  attentions, — ever  growing  in  assiduity  with  each 
successive  year, — of  her  young  husband. 

You  have  chosen,  from  out  the  varied  wealth  of  the  gar¬ 
den  and  the  forest,  the  loveliest  and  rarest  flower  that 
attracted  your  eye  ;  will  you  have  it  brighten  and  perfume 
your  home  to  the  utmost  ?  Then  study  its  nature,  its  habits, 
what  soil  it  likes  best,  what  companions  suit  it  (for  plants 
and  flowers  also  have  their  preferences),  what  degree  of 
moisture,  of  heat,  of  shade,  or  of  sunshine.  Gardeners  will 
tell  you  that  wild  flowers  from  the  meadow,  the  woods,  or 
the  mountains,  will  seem  to  change  their  nature  under  the 
care  of  an  intelligent  and  loving  hand,  and  in  a  few  seasons 
become  so  beautiful  that  they  seem  to  have  been  transformed 
by  culture.  Not  that  only  ;  but  the  flowers  most  beautiful 
by  nature  are  so  much  improved  by  the  art  of  the  gardener, 
that  their  charms  are  not  only  increased  tenfold,  but  varied 
continually  so  as  to  create  ever  new  surprise  and  delight. 
And  who  does  not  know  that  the  horticulturist’s  skill  can 
enhance  to  a  wonderful  extent  the  qualities  of  the  most 
delicious  fruits  of  our  fields  or  our  gardens  % 

This  is  “to  Dress  and  to  Keep”  the  Home-Garden. 

B 

'  To  you,  O  man  of  the  world,  your  home-garden,  your 
paradise, — the  source  of  your  purest  and  dearest  felicity  on 
this  side  of  the  grave,  is  the  mind  and  heart  and  soul  of  your 
wife,  your  companion,  the  mother  of  your  children.  Her 
soul,  her  life,  is  given  you  “to  dress  and  to  keep;”  and 
on  your  appreciating  her  nature  and  her  worth,  on  your 
knowing  how  to  call  forth  by  your  love,  your  care,  your 
devotion  to  her  service,  by  the  sunlight  of  your  examples 
much  more  even  than  by  your  mere  love  and  tenderness, — 
must  depend  whether  or  not  you  shall  have  a  home-garden, 
a  paradise, — or  a  hell  upon  earth. 

There  is  no  delicacy,  no  purity  of  thought  and  word  and 


80 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


act, — no  feeling  of  respect  or  reverence  so  exalted, — no 
chivalrous  devotion  to  the  honor,  the  unblemished  name, 
the  generous  and  holy  purposes  of  a  true  woman, — to  be 
compared  with  the  all-embracing  sentiment  of  God-given 
love  in  the  sinless  soul  of  a  man,  united,  through  God’s 
blessing,  with  the  maiden  chosen  in  accordance  with  God’s 
will.  Catholics,  who  are  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the 
sacred  character  of  the  matrimonial  union, ^  who  know  what 
untold  graces  are  set  apart  for  their  whole  after-life  by  the 
sacramental  blessing,  enter  upon  married  life  with  mingled 
joy  and  fear, — because  they  are  made  aware  both  of  their 
responsibilities  and  of  the  mighty  aids  divinely  given  them, 
to  make  of  their  whole  career  one  long  day  of  rejoicing,  be¬ 
cause  it  must  be  one  long  day  of  generous  devotion  to  duty. 

The  husband’s  first  duty,  under  God’s  service,  is  to  his 
wife.  He  must  give  himself  to  her  as  she  has  left  all  to  fol¬ 
low  him.  His  must  be, — from  his  bridal  hour  to  his  dying 
day, — one  long,  uninterrupted,  most  loving  and  unstinted 
service  to  her.  He  must,  every  day  that  he  rises,  set  her 
image  higher  in  his  heart ;  reverence  her  more,  seek  to  have 
others  know  her  worth  better,  and  show  her  greater  honor. 

It  is  the  death  of  conjugal  love,  where  respect  diminishes 
in  the  heart  instead  of  daily  increasing,  and  where  that 
delicacy  and  courtesy  in  word  and  manner  which  we  call 
outward  respect,  is  dispensed  with  on  pretext  of  nearness 
and  intimacy  and  unreserve. 

Make  it,  therefore,  the  law  of  yQur  life,  that  as  the  years' 
of  your  wedded  life  pass  by,  they  shall  find,  beside  the 
ever-blooming  flower  of  love  in  the  center  of  your  home- 
garden  the  flower  of  undying  reverence.  One  cannot  live 
without  the  other.  And  to  the  wife  we  must  say  :  If  you 
would  have  your  husband’ s  love  and  respect  to  know  no 
fading, — make  it  a  sacred  duty  to  God,  every  day  of  your 
life,  to  invent  new  methods  of  showing  your  companion 
that  your  love  is  ever  young  and  fresh  as  the  flowers  that 
bloom  on  high  in  the  City  of  God. 

Let  men  of  culture  and  position,  who  owe  to  those  be¬ 
neath  them, — much  more  than  to  those  of  their  own  level, 


THE  HUSBAND'S  FIRST  DUTY  IS  TO  HIS  WIFE. 


81 


— the  light  of  good  example,  read  and  ponder  carefully 
every  word  in  the  following  exquisite  lines  from  a  woman  : 

“  If  I  leave  all  for  thee,  wilt  thou  exchange 
And  be  all  to  me?  Shall  I  never  miss 
Home-talk  and  blessing,  and  the  common  kiss 
That  comes  to  each  in  turn,  nor  count  it  strange, 

When  I  look  up,  to  drop  on  a  new  range 
Of  walls  and  floors,  .  .  .  another  home  than  this  ? 

Nay,  wilt  thou  fill  that  place  by  me  which  is 
Filled  by  dead  eyes  too  tender  to  know  change  ? 

That’s  hardest  !  If  to  conquer  love,  has  tried, 

To  conquer  grief  tries  more,  ...  as  all  things  prove  : 

For  grief  indeed  is  love  and  grief  beside. 

Alas  !  I  have  grieved  so,  I  am  hard  to  love — 

Yet  love  me — wilt  thou  ?  Open  thine  heart  wide. 

And  fold  within,  the  wet  wings  of  thy  dove.” 

A  priestly  voice  is  daily  and  hourly  wont  to  guide  the 
young  amid  the  first  trials  and  bitternesses  of  wedded  life, 
as  well  as  amid  the  storms  which  attend  on  its  noon  and  its 
setting.  The  reader  knows  also  how  precious  and  safe  a 
refuge  fathers  and  mothers  alike  find  in  that  guidance, 
when  worldly  wisdom  and  worldly  friendship  are  of  no 
avail.  It  was,  nevertheless,  best  that  these  lessons  should 
be  given  from  the  experience  of  persons  of  worldly  station. 
We  have  listened  to  the  most  intimate  secrets  of  a  true 
manly  heart,  still  in  death  for  many  a  year :  the  accents 
seem  to  come  from  the  depths  of  the  sanctuary.  And  this 
last  wayside  flower  of  poetry  we  have  culled,  as  we  seemed 
to  pass  from  the  altar  and  the  awe  of  the  cemetery,  will  also 
have  its  pregnant  reminder. 

Yes, — loved, — nay,  infinitely  dear, — as  are  the  ties  of  the 
home  of  childhood,  when  a  woman  turns  her  back  upon  it 
and  puts  her  hand  in  her  husband’ s  hand  to  walk  the  earth 
alone  with  him,  it  is  as  if  a  deluge  had  swept  over  her  past, 
and  her  spirit,  in  going  back  in  thought  to  the  fireside  of 
father  and  mother,  found  nothing  but  a  ruin,  with  her  loved 
ones  all  dead  to  her.  In  her  grief  for  the  separation,  she 
turns  to  the  Ark  of  her  husband’s  home  and  heart  like  the 
dove  sent  forth  by  the  great  patriarch  ;  has  she  not  a  right 
6 


82 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


that  her  husband  shall  open  his  “heart  wide  and  fold 
within,  the  wet  wings”  and  drooping  spirit  of  her  to  whom 
he  is  now  all  in  all  ? 

There  are  so  many  who  fail,  on  the  very  threshold  of  their 
new  existence,  to  understand  the  yearning  of  their  com¬ 
panions  for  the  home-life  they  have  lost,  and  to  make  up 
by  unselfish  and  unbounded  tenderness  for  this  great  loss  ! 

We  crave  pardon  for  dwelling  thus  at  length  on  the  ne¬ 
cessity, — so  all-important,  so  indispensable, — of  this  union 
of  hearts  between  husband  and  wife.  Without  it  there  is 
no  home,  no  home-life,  no  true  family.  We  have  insisted 
upon  it,  because  without  it  there  can  be  no  life-work  done  to 
any  good  or  meritorious  purpose  by  the  wedded  pair,  be¬ 
come  thus  most  miserable  yoke-fellows.  God  only  grant 
them  to  say,  each  to  the  other : 

“  The  world  (our  home- world)  waits 
For  help.  Beloved,  let  us  love  so  well. 

Our  work  shall  still  be  better  for  our  love. 

And  still  our  love  be  sweeter  for  our  work. 

And  both  commended,  for  the  sake  of  each. 

By  all  true  workers  and  true  lovers  born.” 

Most  blessed  are  those  who  can  thus  look  back  to  the 
parental  home,  and  dwell  with  rapture  on  the  memory  of 
such  a  union  between  the  father  and  mother  who  reared 
them  !  Still  are  they  not  to  forget,  that  this  great  gift  of 
hallowed  conjugal  love  was  only  bestowed  for  the  dear  and 
sweet  work  of  making  home  a  paradise  not  only  for  their 
children,  but  for  their  own  parents,  if  privileged  to  possess 
them  and  shelter  them  there,  for  their  servants,  and  for 
their  friends. 

Work  together  with  United  Hearts. 

Home  should  be  a  paradise  for  the  children.  Would  that 
all  who  are  above  the  cravings  and  anxieties  of  poverty, 
would  understand  this !  Whatever  excuse  the  poor,  the 
over-worked  parents  of  a  large  and  growing  family  may 
plead  for  the  neglect  of  their  little  ones,  or  the  discomforts 


SPECIAL  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  THE  WEALTHY. 


83 


and  disorder  of  their  squalid  fire-side,  none  such  can  be 
claimed  by  the  man  who  has  not  to  fear  for  the  morrow,  or 
to  tremble  for  the  next  week’s  rent. 

It  is  where  wealth,  independence,  comfort,  have  been 
dispensed  to  parents  by  a  kind  Providence,  that  the  obliga¬ 
tion  is  increased  a  thousand-fold  for  father  and  mother  ‘  ‘  to 
dress  and  to  keep”  their  garden. 

The  duty  falls  on  the  father  first.  He  is  the  head  of  the 
family ;  he  is  the  provider,  and  the  protector.  The  wife 
and  mother  governs  within,  and  dispenses  love,  kindness, 
care, — the  bread  of  the  soul  and  the  bread  of  the  body,  to 
every  member  of  the  household.  She  watches  over  the  fire 
on  the  hearth,  and  sees  to  it  that  there  is  warmth,  sunlight, 
and  cheerfulness  for  all  ;  she  also  it  is  who  keeps  alive  the 
fire  of  religious  faith  and  neighborly  charity  on  her  domes¬ 
tic  altar  and  in  every  soul  intrusted  to  her.  The  husband 
only  stands  by  her  side  twice  a  day,  morning  and  evening, 
when  they  are  both  the  united  ministers  of  the  family  sacri¬ 
fice  of  prayer  and  praise.  Throughout  the  remaining  hours 
of  day  and  night  the  wife  and  mother  feeds  the  sacred  fire 
and  the  lamp  of  piety. 

Happy  the  wife  who  is  ever  sustained,  encouraged,  and 
cheered  by  her  husband  in  every  labor  that  has  for  its 
object  the  formation  of  true  children  of  God  in  all  her  dear 
ones,  as  well  as  the  promotion  of  every  scheme  and  indus¬ 
try  for  making  home-life  delightful ! 

It  is  wonderful  how  the  poorest  natural  ability  in  a  wife 
can  be  called  forth  and  developed  by  a  husband  who  is 
careful  to  study  her  and  to  encourage  her  every  effort  for 
the  improvement  of  others  as  well  as  for  her  own.  How 
much  more  marvelous  are  the  results  when  the  wife’s  great 
natural  gifts  are  further  increased  by  the  stimulus  of  a 
husband’ s  praise  and  generous  appreciation !  What  will 
she  not  accomplish  to  make  her  dear  companion  happy ! 
And  what  a  sweet  reward  she  finds  in  that  happiness  for 
her  own  labors  in  favor  of  children,  servants,  and  the  poor 
of  Christ !  Thus  it  is  that  her  work, — their  joint  work, 
rather, — is  still  the  better  for  their  love,  and  that  their  love 


84 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


is  ever  the  sweeter  for  their  work, — and  that  all  outside 
their  blessed  home  “  commend  both  for  the  sake  of  each,” 
and  are  themselves  by  such  examples  stimulated  to  become 
in  their  turn  “true  workers  and  true  lovers.” 

Appeal  to  all  to  aid  in  creating  Blissful  Homes. 

Shall  we  proceed  %  O  you  to  whom  God  has  given  in  this 
world’s  wealth  and  independence,  the  ready  means  of  creat¬ 
ing  and  adorning  such  homes  as  these,  will  you  not  show 
your  gratitude  toward  the  Giver  of  all  good  and  your  solici¬ 
tude  for  the  dearest  interests  of  your  own  children,  by  a 
willing  and  zealous  cooperation  in  this  divine  work  of  mak¬ 
ing  your  household  a  shining  example  to  all  %  Is  the  social 
body  in  our  young  and  magnificently  endowed  America,  by 
allowing  premature  corruption  and  decay  to  fasten  upon  its 
leading  classes,  to  resemble  the  most  lordly  tree  of  our 
forest,  which  begins  to  die  at  the  top  and  propagates  steril¬ 
ity  and  death  downward  to  its  lowest  branches  and  its  very 
roots  ? 

Shall  you  not  rather, — you  who  are  the  crown  and  orna¬ 
ment  of  the  whole  body, — open  your  minds  to  the  conviction, 
that  it  is  through  you  that  life  and  healthful  energy  and 
well-being  and  moral  beauty,  are  to  flow  and  to  spread  from 
above  downward  and  around  to  every  class  and  home  ?  Let 
the  laboring  poor,  the  ill-requited,  weary  toilers  of  city  and 
country-side, — who  are,  like  the  hidden  roots  of  a  mighty 
tree,  the  obscure  feeders  of  the  entire  social  body, — let 
them  be  cared  for,  loved,  cherished,  encouraged  and  aided 
in  their  hard  toil  by  all  above  them, — and  the  love  they  will 
feel  in  return  for  the  love  shown  them,  will  be  like  the 
plentiful  vital  sap  pumped  up  from  the  genial  earth  by 
every  root  and  fiber,  and  sent  coursing  in  warm  healthful 
currents  through  trunk  and  branch,  to  the  topmost  spray  of 
the  goodly  tree. 

Be  it  our  care, — clergymen,  legislators,  magistrates,  men 
and  women  who  wield  the  mighty  pen,  merchants,  manu¬ 
facturers, — all  to  whom  others  beneath  and  around  them 


SPECIAL  RESPONSIBILITY  OF  THE  WEALTHY. 


85 


look  up  for  light,  guidance,  and  support,  to  see  to  it  that 
every  industrious  toiler  dependent  on  us  and  within  reach 
of  our  influence  and  our  aid, — shall  have  a  home  of  his 
own  !  And  teach  him  by  your  own  example  how  to  make 
his  home  bright,  religious,  refined,  happy  ! 

Oh !  let  us  be  up  and  doing  betimes !  For  the  social 
world,  in  our  day,  so  far  resembles  the  troublous  and 
changeful  era  of  St.  Gregory  the  Great,  that  to  the  estab¬ 
lished  and  time-honored  distinctions  of  rank,  to  the  pros¬ 
perous,  wealthy,  and  influential  classes  of  society, — and  to 
every  individual  man  among  them, — this  prophetic  warning 
of  the  great  Pope  may  apply  : 

“  We  are  uppermost  to-day,  and  laugh  at  the  struggles  of 
those  who  seek  to  rise  to  our  level :  let  us  tremble  lest  they 
should  soon  rise  on  our  ruin  !  For  no  one  is  less  secure  of 
his  own  position,  than  the  man  who  only  knows  how  to 
laugh  at  the  misery  of  his  less  fortunate  rival.”  * 


*  Timendum  est  ne,  etiam  nobis  cadentibus,  surgat  qui  a  nobis  stantibus  irride- 
tur ;  quamvis  stare  gam  non  noverit  qui  non  stantem  noverit  irridere. — Lib. 
xxv.,  Moralium. 


CHAPTER  V. 


DARK  SHADOWS  FROM  THE  RUIN  ;  AND  LIGHT  FROM  THE 

HEARTH. 

“  The  hearth  in  hall  was  black  and  dead, 

No  board  was  light  in  bower  within, 

Nor  merry  bowl  nor  welcome  bed  ; 

‘  Here’s  sorry  cheer,’  quoth  the  heir  of  Linne.” 

Old  Ballad. 

“  At  school  I  knew  him — a  sharp-witted  youth, 

Grave,  thoughtful,  and  reserved  among  his  mates, 

Turning  the  hours  of  sport  and  food  to  labor. 

Starving  his  body  to  inform  his  mind.” 

Old  Play. 

While  the  bright  vision  of  a  home, — marked,  indeed, 
with  the  cross,  like  all  true  Christian  homes, — is  still  float¬ 
ing  before  our  mind’ s  eye,  and  before  the  sound  of  love’ s 
divinest  harmonies,  from  around  the  domestic  altar,  has 
died  away  amid  the  noise  of  the  street,  let  us  withdraw  a 
moment,  as  to  some  shady  spot  far  enough  from  the  dust 
and  the  roadside,  and  listen  to  one  or  two  brief  tales, — the 
one  glancing  at  a  life  wasted  and  a  home  ruined,  the  other 
at  a  life  of  early  helplessness,  poverty,  and  heroic  struggle 
directed  toward  building  up  a  home. 

The  crowd  of  ill-clad  and  half-starved  laborers,  of  pale, 
emaciated,  and  overworked  boys  and  girls,  are  hurrying 
past  us  to  their  daily  toil.  Who  knows  but  more  than  one 
of  these  discouraged  husbands  and  parents,  on  listening  to 
what  we  here  say,  may  take  heart  to  make  their  home 
brighter  and  their  poverty  richer  by  patience  and  content  ? 
Who  knows,  too,  if  the  noble  example  of  a  child  more  help- 

86 


THE  HOMELESS  WANDERER. 


87 


less  than  any  of  the  yonng  folk  we  see  from  here,  may  not 
spur  many  a  one  among  them  to  heroic  labor,  self-respect, 
self-reliance,  trust  in  God,  and  success  beyond  their  fondest 
dreams  ? 

So  be  it !  And  so,  this  repose  between  two  long  stages  of 
our  journey,  may  cheer  you,  dear  reader,  to  pursue  the 
mighty  theme  which  grows  on  us. 

The  Homeless  Wanderer. 

We  can  never  forget  the  sad  extremity  of  one  aged  suf¬ 
ferer  found  by  the  police  at  the  steamboat  landing  on  a  bit¬ 
ter  morning  in  early  February.  He  had  been  given  a  free 
passage  on  a  steamer  from  the  interior,  had  found  shelter 
during  the  night  in  the  engine-room,  where  the  stokers,  some 
of  whom  were  Irishmen,  recognized  beneath  the  soiled  gar¬ 
ments  a  countryman  and  a  gentleman,  and  in  the  terrible 
cough  which  racked  the  poor  invalid’s  chest,  the  sure  sign 
of  a  speedy  end  to  his  sufferings.  So,  the  kind-hearted 
fellows  shared  with  him  their  own  scanty  fare  and  the 
warmth  of  the  coal-room  ; — and  when  they  had  arrived  at 
the  term  of  their  journey,  their  guest  left  them  with  many 
thanks  and  blessings,  to  knock  at  the  door  of  an  old  ac¬ 
quaintance,  on  whom,  in  better  days,  he  had  conferred  more 
than  one  obligation.  His,  however,  had  been  a  downward 
course  for  many  a  long  year ;  he  had  dissipated  his  large 
patrimony,  thrown  away  splendid  natural  gifts  improved 
by  the  most  careful  cultivation,  and  had  again  and  again 
wrecked  the  home  which  he  had  won  back  by  his  fitful 
industry, — wearying  the  generosity  and  patience  of  his 
friends,  till  he  became  an  outcast,  utterly  broken  in  health, 
in  heart,  and  in  temper. 

He  was  almost  a  dying  man,  however,  when  on  that  bit¬ 
ter  Sunday  morning  in  February,  he  stood  shivering  at  the 
door  where  he  had  so  often  been  welcome,  and  gasping 
forth  to  the  heartless  menial  who  opened  it  his  name  and 
his  pitiful  prayer  for  help  and  shelter.  The  door  was  closed 
brutally  in  his  face,  till  the  master’s  will  was  ascertained  ; 


88 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


and  tlie  master’ s  answer  was  a  peremptory  order  to  give  the 
poor  wretch  nothing, — no,  not  even  a  kind  word  !  .  .  .  • 

Stnng  with  indignation  and  rage,  the  latter  turned  away, 
and  blundered  blindly  through  the  storm  back  the  way  he 
had  come,  till  on  the  wharf  he  fell  exhausted  and  fainting. 
At  the  police  station  the  letters  found  on  him  disclosed  his 
profession,  as  well  as  the  names  of  several  prominent  citi¬ 
zens,  and  to  the  house  of  one  of  the  latter  the  wretched 
wanderer  was  taken. 

Not  in  vain  did  they  knock  for  admission  at  the  door  of 
that  hospitable  home.  Its  master  was  under  no  obligation 
to  the  sufferer  ;  but  that  he  suffered  and  was  apparently 
near  his  end,  moved  himself  and  his  family  to  the  most 
brotherly  compassion.  A  physician  was  sent  for  in  all  haste, 
and  meanwhile  the  sick  man  was  given  a  most  comfortable 
room  and  bed,  together  with  such  restoratives  as  were 
deemed  most  needful. 

These,  with  the  remedies  prescribed  by  the  doctor,  seemed 
to  revive  the  sinking  flame  of  life  in  a  body  wasted  by  long 
excesses  and  recent  privation.  At  evening  and  through  the 
night,  the  sudden  change  from  the  deck  of  a  steamer,  the 
inclemency  of  the  open  streets  in  winter,  and  the  horrors  of 
a  police  station-house, — to  the  elegant  room  in  which  he 
lay  and  the  gentle  attentions  of  his  hosts,  so  roused  the 
spirit  of  the  patient,  that  he  was  able  to  sit  up  and  converse. 

With  this  momentary  return  of  vitality,  all  his  old  reck- 
*  lessness  came  back  ;  and  he  told  several  of  his  late  adven¬ 
tures  and  mishaps  with  zest,  mixing  his  account  of  himself 
with  bitter  and  merciless  scorn  of  his  own  family  and  of  the 
friends  who  had  cast  him  off.  A  better  and  more  hopeful 
spirit  had,  however,  seemed  to  rule  his  utterances  when  the 
kind  host  and  his  wife  were  lavishing  their  first  charitable 
care  on  him.  As  he  gazed  round  the  room,  he  would  ex¬ 
claim,  as  if  waking  out  of  a  dreadful  dream,  4  4  Oh,  the  bliss 
of  having  a  home  !  the  bliss  of  having  a  home  !  ”  To  this 
first  soft  mood,  however,  soon  succeeded  one  of  fierce  an¬ 
tagonism  to  all  mankind,  and  violent  denunciation  of  those 
who  had  wronged  him.  His  anger  seemed  to  consume  the 


THE  HOMELESS  WANDERER. 


89 


last  remnants  of  his  physical  strength,  flaming  forth  more 
fiercely  and  luridly  in  the  intervals  of  his  broken  rest. 
When  the  physician  returned  early  the  next  morning,  he 
found  his  patient  very  much  worse,  but  most  anxious  to 
live, — uthat  he  might,” — so  he  expressed  it, — “triumph 
over  all  his  enemies,  and  recover  his  lost  property  and 
home.” 

The  physician  felt  himself  bound  to  tell  him  that  he  must 
entertain  no  hopes  of  recovery.  “Not  recover,  doctor!” 
broke  forth  the  miserable  man;  “not  recover!  Why,  I 
am  not  fifty  years  old,  and  I  am  still  hale  and  hearty.  I 
only  want  three  years  of  life  to  redeem  the  past  and  put  my 
slanderers  to  shame.”  The  physician  bade  him  put  away 
these  false  hopes,  and  open  his  soul  to  sentiments  more  be¬ 
fitting  one  who  must  very  soon  appear  before  the  great  God 
in  whose  hand  were  life  and  death.  “  Very  soon  !  ”  gasped 
the  other;  “why,  you  don’t  mean  to  say  I  am  dying?” 
“You  most  assuredly  are,”  was  the  firm,  though  gentle 
answer.  “Dying!”  screamed  the  poor  wretch,  as  he  al¬ 
most  started  from  the  bed.  “Oh,  no  !  do  not  tell  me  so. 
I  cannot  afford  to  die  at  present.  Let  me  only  live  a  year, 
and  you  shall  see  what  I  can  do.  I  have  broken  my  wife’s 
heart,  beggared  and  disgraced  my  children.  Help  me  to 
live  one  year,  and  I  shall  merit  their  forgiveness.” 

And  thus  pitifully,  frantically  he  went  on  pleading  with 
the  physician,  “for  a  month,  for  a  single  hour!”  “Can 
you  not  give  me  a  single  hour,  curse  you!”  he  cried. 
“  What  is  your  skill  worth,  if  you  cannot  give  me  one  hour 
of  life?”  .  .  .  And  so  the  fearful  passion  and  despair  of 
that  death-bed  went  on  increasing  in  gloom  and  horror,  while 
this  guilty  life  was  fast  ebbing  away.  “  Oh,  I  cannot  die, — 
I  will  not,  will  not !  ”  the  hapless  creature  would  continue  to 
repeat,  as  spirit  and  body  writhed  under  the  united  terrors 
of  the  wasted,  misspent  past  and  the  dark,  eternal  future. 
“  God  is  bound  to  give  me  life,”  he  went  on,  as  the  foam 
gathered  on  his  lips.  “  Yes  !  you  cannot  refuse,”  he  would 
say,  lifting  himself  from  his  pillow,  and  wildly  extending 
his  arms  upward,  half  in  supplication,  half  in  blasphemous 


90 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


menace.  “  I  mean  to  reform  now , — I  mean  now  to  do  bet¬ 
ter  ;  ”  .  .  .  and  his  strength  would  utterly  give  way  be¬ 
neath  the  icy  hand  of  the  dread  Avenger. 

It  was  in  vain  to  speak  words  of  comfort,  to  recall  the 
infinite  mercy  of  God’s  fatherly  heart,  who  would  take  the 
will  for  the  deed.  “  No  !  no  !  ”  he  would  repeat ;  u  I  must 
repair,  I  must  live  !  ”  To  look  upon  that  despair  was  more 
harrowing,  more  appalling  than  tongue  or  pen  can  describe. 

Scarcely  had  that  guilty  soul  departed,  when  a  most  fear¬ 
ful  change  took  place  in  the  dead  man’s  features.  Their 
expression  became  so  ghastly,  so  unspeakably  terrible,  that 
the  ladies  present  fled  wildly  from  the  room,  making  vain 
efforts  to  banish  from  their  imagination  that  terrible  face  in 
which  was  depicted  all  the  agony  of  everlasting  despair. 

While  the  undertakers  were  sent  for,  a  veil  was  thrown 
over  the  head  of  the  corpse  ;  it  was  forthwith  placed  in  a 
strong  double  coffin,  firmly  screwed  and  nailed  down,  and 
never  afterward  opened,  even  to  satisfy  the  dead  man’s 
relatives. 

“  King  Henry.  ...  If  thou  tliink’st  on  Heaven’s  bliss, 

Hold  up  thy  hand,  make  signal  of  thy  hope. — 

He  dies,  and  makes  no  sign  ;  O  God  forgive  him  ! 

Warwick.  So  bad  a  death  argues  a  monstrous  life. 

King  Henry.  Forbear  to  judge,  for  we  are  sinners  all. — 

Close  up  his  eyes,  and  draw  the  curtain  close ; 

And  let  us  all  to  meditation.”  * 

Let  this  one  example  suffice  as  a  warning  to  men  who, 
deriving  from  their  parents  independence,  wealth,  and  po¬ 
sition, — feel  no  incentive  to  labor  or  honorable  exertion, 
squander  in  idleness  and  vicious  enjoyment  the  fruits  of 
their  parents’  industry,  have  no  sense  of  their  accountabil¬ 
ity  for  all  these  inherited  advantages,  or  for  the  ill  use  of 
talents  and  education,  and  the  waste  of  fruitful  years, — and 
make  of  their  existence  upon  earth  a  curse  to  others  as  well 
as  to  themselves.  Alas, — there  are  many  such  ;  and  would 
that  the  lesson  of  this  wasted  life,  like  a  light  placed  on  high 
near  a  mucli-frequented  coast,  famed  for  appalling  ship- 


4- 


*  Shakspeare,  Second  Part  of  King  Henry  IV.,  act  iii. ,  scene  iii. 


A  LOST  HOME  NOBLY  RECLAIMED. 


91 


wrecks, — could  teach  our  young  men  to  avoid  the  reefs  on 
which  so  many  lives  have  been  lost,  and  to  steer  far  away 
from  the  fatal  currents  that  have  borne  so  many  thousands 
to  ruin ! 

On  the  other  hand,  we  have  such  noble  instances  of  heroic 
endurance  and  perseverance  in  laboring  to  create  a  home, — 
and  that,  too,  among  men  born  in  every  class  of  society, 
and  contending  with  the  most  adverse  and,  seemingly,  dis¬ 
couraging  circumstances. 

How  a  Son  repaired  his  Father*  s  Ruinous  Extravagance. 

One  man’s  bright  life  now  comes  up  before  our  mind’s 
eye,  like  the  summit  of  some  mighty  mountain  towering 
aloft  above  the  whole  earth  for  hundreds  of  miles  around, 
which,  left  behind  by  the  traveler  at  early  morn,  is  seen, 
at  the  close  of  day,  when  the  landscape  is  shrouded  in 
gloom,  glistening  far  up  in  the  heavens  with  the  last  glories 
of  sunlight.  His  father  had,  by  a  life  of  reckless  extrava¬ 
gance,  lost  every  acre  of  the  broad  lands  possessed  for  gen¬ 
erations  by  his  family,  and  left  his  only  son  nothing  but 
debts,  which  the  latter  vowed  he  should  pay  to  the  last 
farthing  by  his  own  industry.  He  was  an  officer  in  the 
army  ;  and  as  a  military  career  promised  no  opportunities 
of  fulfilling  what  he  considered  a  sacred  obligation,  he 
threw  up  his  commission,  and  betook  himself  to  farming  in 
a  new  and  richly  endowed  country.  Being  unmarried,  he 
felt  himself  at  liberty  to  choose  the  pursuit  which  seemed 
most  adapted  to  his  own  abilities,  and  best  calculated  to 
bring  him  speedy  and  lawful  wealth.  He,  therefore,  be¬ 
took  him  to  sheep-farming, — attached  to  him  by  his  kind¬ 
ness  of  heart  and  his  gentleness,  much  more  than  by  the 
ascendency  of  his  superior  intelligence  and  culture,  several 
rude  men,  who  had  been  rather  a  terror  to  the  settlers  till 
then,  made  them  sober  and  steady  workers  like  himself, 
taught  them,  the  value  of  truthfulness  and  honesty,  shared 
most  generously  with  them  the  profits  of  their  joint  labors  ; 
— and,  increasing  rapidly  both  his  flocks  and  his  profits, 


92 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


became  at  the  end  of  six  years  the  wealthiest  proprietor 
in  his  district.  Having  settled  his  companions  on  farms 
of  their  own,  which  he  helped  them  to  stock  and  taught 
them  to  manage,  he  sold  out  his  own  interest  for  a  large 
sum,  sufficient  to  pay  off  his  father’s  debts  and  to  secure 
himself  a  modest  independence  for  life,  and  returned  to 
his  birthplace. 

The  parental  debts  were  paid  some  months  before  he  set 
out  on  his  homeward  journey,  and  the  balance  of  the  money 
was  intrusted  to  enterprising  bankers  with  whom  he  had 
entertained  frequent  business  relations.  Indeed,  he  had 
more  than  once  been  urged  to  become  a  partner  in  the  con¬ 
cern.  During  all  these  years  of  unceasing  struggle  with  his 
own  inclinations  and  habits,  much  more  than  with  the 
strange  and  deep  humiliations  of  the  life  he  had  adopted, — 
he  had  cherished  one  purpose  above  all  others,  that  of 
creating  an  honored  and  happy  home  for  one  to  whom  he 
had  been  affianced  in  early  youth,  who  had  never  consented 
to  separate  her  destiny  from  his,  and  whose  almost  daily 
letters  had  cheered  him  amid  gloom  and  depression,  and 
strengthened  his  soul  to  undertake  and  undergo  what  other¬ 
wise  he  must  have  deemed  impossible. 

She  became  his  wife  a  few  weeks  after  his  return,  and 
while  the  thought  was  uppermost  in  his  heart  of  purchasing 
back  from  the  present  owner  a  portion  of  his  patrimonial 
estate,  building  himself  a  home  on  it,  and  devoting  the  re¬ 
maining  years  of  his  life  to  the  task  of  recovering  the  re¬ 
mainder. 

He  did  succeed  in  persuading  the  proprietor,  sadly  in 
need  of  money,  to  part  with  a  portion  of  the  land,  and  paid 
him  an  exorbitant  price  for  it.  But,  when  he  came  to  order 
plans  for  a  modest  dwelling-house  to  be  erected  thereon,  he 
was  thunderstruck  at  learning  that  his  bankers  were  insol¬ 
vent. 

Religion,  however,  much  more  than  pride  of  race,  had 
ever  been  the  mainspring  of  his  resolution,  and  it  now  saved 
him  from  discouragement.  He  was  passing  rich  in  the  love 
of  a  wife  who  prized  him  for  his  work,  not  his  wealth.  To- 


THE  WORK  OF  UNITED  HEARTS. 


93 


gether  they  sought  consolation  and  counsel  where  it  is  ever 
sure  to  be  found, — at  the  Mercy  Seat ;  and  together  they 
resolved  to  face  the  privations  and  the  struggles  which  had 
already  brought  him  the  means  of  achieving  the  independ¬ 
ence  and  comfort  so  suddenly  and  sadly  compromised. 
The  generous  husband  would  have  spared  his  beloved  com¬ 
panion  the  trials  which  a  brave-hearted  man,  in  spite  of 
his  gentle  nurture,  can  always  face  successfully,  but  which 
few  delicate  women  can  endure.  What  man,  however,  is 
braver  of  heart  than  a  true  woman  ?  And  so,  the  faithful 
wife  would  not  hear  of  further  separation  from  him  she  had 
loved  with  such  true  single-heartedness. 

The  country  in  which  he  had  retrieved  his  fallen  fortunes 
had  undergone  many  changes :  tracts  favorable  to  sheep¬ 
farming  or  other  like  occupations  were  no  longer  to  be  had 
for  the  seeking.  To  find  them,  one  had  to  go  far  into  the 
interior,  to  incur  greater  fatigues,  greater  risk,  far  greater 
expense,  and  with  far  less  prospect  of  efficient  aid  from 
needy  emigrants.  The  gold-fields,  on  the  other  hand, 
opened  a  new  and  more  tempting  prospect  of  sudden  gain  ; 
and  to  the  gold-fields  our  hero  and  heroine  directed  their 
steps. 

With  an  energy  that  the  devotion  of  his  worshiped  wife 
and  the  sacred  purpose  on  which  he  had  set  his  heart  could 
alone  sustain,  he  bent  himself  to  the  fearful  ordeal  before 
him.  He  had  brought  with  him  from  home  money  enough 
to  secure  her  the  privacy  and  some  of  the  comforts  of  a  home 
superior  to  the  wretched  temporary  abodes  that  sheltered 
the  immense  majority  of  miners.  But  while  he  applied 
himself  to  his  self-imposed  task,  she  became  the  angel  of 
this  wild  and  lawless  community ;  induced  those  of  her 
own  faith  to  rear  a  rude  but  commodious  chapel,  where  she 
called  them  together  on  Sundays,  recited  the  mass-prayers 
and  rosary  with  them,  read  beautiful  instructions  from  her 
little  stock  of  pious  books,  catechised  the  children,  gave 
good  advice  and  needed  comfort  to  all  who  sought  her, 
and  learned  where  she  could  find  sickness  and  distress  to 
alleviate.  In  good  time,  she  also  secured  occasional  visits 


94 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


from  the  nearest  missionary.  In  all  this  she  seemed  only 
to  be  her  husband’s  helper.  For  his  goodness  made  his 
fellow-miners  find  him  out  long  before  the  fame  of  his 
former  success  and  generosity  had  reached  them.  Not 
many  months  had  elapsed  in  this  hard  life  before  he  fell 
sick  of  a  dangerous  fever,  and  while  he  lay  at  death’ s  door, 
his  first  child  was  born  to  him  ;  the  entire  motley  popula¬ 
tion  forgetting  their  greed,  their  religious  differences  and 
national  animosities,  to  minister  to  the  comfort  of  the  pair 
with  a  delicacy,  an  assiduity,  and  a  constancy  begotten 
of  heartfelt  veneration  and  gratitude.  The  husband  and 
father  recovered  slowly  at  first ;  but  when  the  delirium 
allowed  him  to  recognize  his  wife  and  to  look  upon  the  face 
of  his  babe,  a  mighty  wave  of  healthful  energy  seemed  to 
pass  over  his  soul,  and  to  lift  him  above  his  illness.  He 
was  grateful,  too,  that  the  dear  companion  of  his  trials  had 
been  spared  from  a  heavy  visitation  of  sickness ;  and  his 
heart  melted  within  him  at  all  the  marks  of  respectful  and 
affectionate  interest  lavished  on  himself  and  his  dear  ones 
by  the  men  and  women  around  them. 

Indeed,  while  he  lay  on  his  bed  of  sickness,  the  miners 
had  volunteered  to  work  by  twos  and  in  succession  at  the 
mine  which  belonged  to  the  invalid,  just  as  their  wives 
watched  successively  in  the  sick-rooms  to  tend  both  the 
sufferers.  Nor  was  this  charity  without  its  present  reward. 
For  rumors  went  abroad  that  everything  succeeded  with 
the  men  and  women  who  were  thus  foremost  in  their  charity 
and  devotion.  At  any  rate,  during  the  illness,  the  work¬ 
men  happened  upon  a  vein  of  gold  of  extraordinary  rich¬ 
ness,  the  produce  of  which  was  treasured  up  most  con¬ 
scientiously  for  the  sick  man.  He  recovered  to  find  himself 
rich  far  beyond  his  most  sanguine  expectations. 

Of  this  wealth, — as  could  be  surmised, — the  owner  made 
a  most  noble  use.  The  men  who  had  stood  by  him  were 
assisted,  every  one  of  them,  to  secure  themselves  independ¬ 
ence  and  a  fortune.  A  noble  church  took  the  place  of  the 
former  rude  wooden  chapel,  and  schools  and  other  institu¬ 
tions  soon  grew  up  round  the  church.  The  estate  at  home 


NOBLE  DEVOTION  OF  A  SWISS  ORPHAN  EOT. 


95 


returned  to  the  brave -hear ted  heir ;  but  he  had  pledged 
himself,  together  with  his  wife,  that,  while  no  debt  should 
encumber  the  inheritance  of  his  children  when  it  descended 
to  them,  he  should  rear  them  to  labor  and  industry,  and 
teach  them  by  the  example  of  their  parents  to  bestow  on 
charity  and  on  the  self -helping  poor  the  surplus  revenues 
his  fathers  wasted  on  self-indulgence. 

Happy,  most  happy,  and  most  blessed  was  their  house¬ 
hold,  husband  and  wife  vying  with  each  other  in  practicing 
piety  toward  God  and  charity  toward  the  neighbor.  Nor, 
despite  the  long  and  bitter  trials  of  the  past,  did  they  mur¬ 
mur  or  repine,  when  sickness  and  death  visited  their  little 
flock  of  lovely  children.  The  Christian  mother  knew  that 
the  angel  who  marked  their  door-post  with  the  sign  of  the 
cross,  as  he  came  to  bear  away  their  first-born  from  them, 
was  the  messenger  of  infinite  Mercy  and  Wisdom.  Many  a 
blessing,  from  every  lowly  home  far  and  wide,  was  daily 
uttered  on  the  noble  man  whose  heart  and  hand  were  ever 
open  to  the  needy  or  the  erring,  winning  the  deep  love  of 
the  poor  much  more  by  the  eloquence  of  his  unwearied 
devotion  to  their  interests  and  his  spotless  life,  than  by  his 
enlightened  liberality  in  stimulating  the  industrious  and 
helping  every  manly  effort  made  toward  honest  independ¬ 
ence.  But  who  can  tell  the  worshipful  feeling  of  reverence 
with  which  his  angel  wife  was  regarded  ?  She  had  seen  the 
laboring  poor  at  their  worst,  and  had  discovered  how  much 
their  virtues  excel  their  vices,  how  rich  a  soil  their  hearts 
afford  in  which  to  sow  the  seeds  of  gratitude  and  of  every 
Godlike  quality.  And  so,  does  she  to  this  day  move  among 
her  devoted  poor  neighbors, — paupers  there  are  none, — the 
living  image  of  that  Goodness  which  only  came  down  on 
earth  to  renew  in  man  the  divine  likeness. 

Noble  Devotion  of  a  Swiss  Orphan  Boy. 

Most  unlike  the  two  men  whose  story  we  have  just  been 
telling,  in  its  beginnings  and  progress,  was  the  life  which 
we  are  about  to  sketch  in  its  main  features.  The  advan- 


96 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


tages  of  high  birth,  gentle  nurture,  and  careful  education, 
taken  together  with  the  power  for  good  which  inherited 
wealth  and  position  bestow, — are  a  mighty  trust  in  the 
hands  of  mortal  man,  and  involve  a  fearful  responsibility 
toward  the  Almighty  Giver.  Where  an  early  fear  of  Him 
who  is  the  Judge  of  the  whole  earth,  is  instilled  into  the 
mind,  and  the  Christian  sense  of  generosity  and  accounta¬ 
bility  is  carefully  fostered  in  the  children  of  the  well-born 
and  wealthy,  the  good  done  by  the  proper  use  of  riches  and 
position,  by  the  influence  which  superior  culture  and  su¬ 
perior  station  command,  is  incalculable. 

Where,  however,  a  man  born  without  any  of  these  social 
advantages,  and  left  from  childhood  to  struggle  against 
every  evil  example  and  tendency,  without  education  and 
without  proper  direction  or  encouragement,  the  castaway 
child  develops  into  the  self-reliant  boy  and  the  man  of  in¬ 
domitable  energy,  industry,  and  stainless  integrity,  till  he 
becomes  a  prince  among  the  benefactors  of  his  race, — there 
we  have  a  miracle  of  true  manhood.  Such  is  the  man  whose 
story  we  now  recall. 

We  shall  call  him  Johann.  He  was  born  near  Burglen, 
the  birthplace  of  Tell,  two  months  after  the  sudden  death 
of  his  father.  His  mother  married  again  a  native  of  the 
Lower  Engadine,  whose  profession  of  peddler  led  him  to 
frequent  alternately  the  Forest  Cantons  and  the  beautiful 
cities  and  hamlets  of  Northern  Italy.  The  child  was  in  his 
fifth  year  when  his  step-father,  who  had  been  guilty  of  the 
double  crime  of  murder  and  highway  robbery,  found  his 
way  with  his  wife  and  family  to  Genoa.  There,  the  better  to 
conceal  his  identity,  he  found  employment  around  the  Ca¬ 
thedral  of  San  Lorenzo,  till  such  time  as  he  could  secure 
passage  for  himself  and  his  wife  and  their  youngest  child  in 
a  merchant  ship  bound  for  Sumatra.  The  wretched  wife  and 
her  babe  died  on  the  passage,  poisoned,  it  was  believed,  by 
the  unnatural  husband  and  parent,  who  was  imprisoned  on 
his  arrival,  but  escaped,  and,  after  many  adventures,  found 
his  way  to  New  Zealand,  where  he  perished  miserably. 

Johann  and  his  half-sister,  some  two  years  younger  than 


NOBLE  DEVOTION  OF  A  SWISS  OBPEAN  BOY. 


97 


himself,  had  been  made  over  by  contract  to  one  of  these  in¬ 
famous  'padroni ,  or  dealers  in  Italian  children  shipped  to 
England  and  America,  and  held  as  veritable  slaves  by  their 
inhuman  masters.  Taught  music  or  some  other  art,  these 
innocents  were  hopelessly  condemned  to  labor  for  the  sole 
profit  of  their  owners,  and  made  to  endure  a  life  of  de¬ 
gradation  so  awful,  that  unspeakable  filth,  poverty,  and 
starvation  were  often  the  lightest  part  of  the  burthen  of 
misery.  Johann,  on  being  stolen  from  his  poor  heart-broken 
mother,  was  allowed  to  retain  nothing  of  his  raiment  even, 
but  a  rude  silver  locket,  so  black  and  battered  that  it  was 
deemed  worthless ;  it  contained,  however,  his  certificate  of 
baptism.  He  was  called  by  another  name,  and  forbidden 
under  the  most  awful  threats  of  punishment  ever  to  men¬ 
tion  his  mother’ s  name  or  his  own,  or  to  acknowledge  any 
one  as  his  parent  but  the  wretch  who  took  himself  and  sev¬ 
eral  other  children  to  London.  Fortunately,  or  unfortunate¬ 
ly,  for  the  little  creature,  he  caught  the  small- pox,  almost 
immediately  after  his  arrival  in  that  city,  the  disease  assum¬ 
ing  a  most  virulent  form,  accompanied  by  fever  and  deli¬ 
rium,  which,  on  his  recovery,  completely  obliterated  all 
memory  of  the  past.  His  padrone  meanwhile  sailed  for 
New  York,  deeming  Johann  lost,  and  transferring  all  claim 
to  his  services  to  another  of  the  tribe  remaining  in  London. 

The  child,  who  was  not  lost  sight  of  by  the  latter,  recov¬ 
ered  ;  but  left  the  hospital  very  feeble,  half  blind,  and 
seemingly  imbecile.  Picked  up  one  morning  in  January, 
as  he  lay  famished,  half-unconscious,  and  half-frozen  in  one 
of  the  by-lanes  of  Southwark,  he  was  taken  to  the  room  of 
a  poor  shoemaker’s  wife,  who,  childless  herself,  received  the 
little  waif  as  some  great  gift  of  God.  And,  surely,  he  was  a 
blessing  in  disguise,  sent  by  the  Father  of  the  orphan,  to  a 
soul  overflowing  with  divinest  charity, — one  of  those  lowly 
ones  so  dear  to  Christ,  so  rich  in  the  gifts  of  the  Spirit,  so 
far  advanced  above  the  learned  and  the  great  ones  of  this 
world  in  the  sublime  paths  of  sanctity.  Nevertheless,  she 
was  the  wife  of  a  drunken  husband,  whom  she  had  mostly 
to  support  by  her  own  thrift,  and  whose  insane  fits  of  vio- 
7 


98 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


lence  made  her  life  as  insecure  as  it  was  miserable.  Amid 
all  this  poverty,  sin,  and  wretchedness,  this  beautiful  soul 
grew  daily  in  holiness  and  merit.  The  atmosphere  of  good¬ 
ness  and  purity  that  surrounded  her  filled  her  vicious  com¬ 
panion  with  reverence  while  he  was  sober,  and  when  in¬ 
toxication  transformed  him  into  a  wild  beast,  the  very 
majesty  of  his  wife’s  virtue  awed  him  into  respect  and  sub¬ 
mission. 

On  the  day  when  this  good,  admirable  woman,  as  she  re¬ 
turned  from  early  mass  at  a  neighboring  church,  found 
Johann  and  took  him  to  her  heart  and  her  home, — the  hus¬ 
band  happened  to  be  half-crazed  by  a  long  course  of  de¬ 
bauchery.  He  drove  both  his  wife  and  her  charge  back 
into  the  street  with  fearful  oaths  and  threats  of  violence. 
A  neighboring  woman  sheltered  the  two  till  the  drunken 
man’s  fit  was  over,  leaving  him  plunged  in  a  lethargic  sleep. 
It  was  the  wife’ s  opportunity.  She  watched  tenderly  over 
the  slumberer,  caring  meanwhile  for  Johann’s  pressing 
needs  ;  got  him  clean  linen  and  such  warm  raiment  as  she 
could,  made  him  partake  of  a  hearty  meal,  and  forced  him 
to  take  rest  in  a  quiet  corner  of  her  lodgings, — the  very 
place  where  she  was  wont  to  pray  and  meditate  herself 
when  she  most  needed  the  sweet  refreshment  ever  found  in 
communion  with  God. 

The  husband,  on  awaking  to  the  consciousness  of  his 
guilt  and  the  sense  of  racking  pain  consequent  upon  his 
shameful  excesses,  was  all  submission  to  his  gentle  wife’s 
will,  and  welcomed  heartily  the  little  stranger.  Thencefor¬ 
ward,  Eunice, — for  such  was  her  name, — had  two  sick  per¬ 
sons  to  care  for  and  to  support.  But  she  was  not  forgotten 
in  her  dire  need.  One  of  these  noble  English  ladies,  whose 
high  birth  is  their  least  merit  before  men  and  their  least 
recommendation  to  the  love  of  God  and  his  angels, — stum¬ 
bled  into  the  poor  apartment,  and  promised  to  return.  Eu¬ 
nice  had  never  yet  asked  or  accepted  relief  under  any  form, 
and  her  soul  could  not  brook  the  idea  of  obtaining  assist¬ 
ance  from  any  one  so  long  as  she  could  work  herself.  Work 
she  could  not  now,  however  ; — and  the  assistance  was  prof- 


NOBLE  DEVOTION  OF  A  SWISS  ORPHAN  BOT. 


99 


fered  in  so  delicate  and  generous  a  form,  that  her  self-respect 
was  spared,  and  the  boon  gratefully  accepted. 

The  husband  soon  died  ;  and  the  slow  fever  which  con¬ 
sumed  poor  Johann  yielded  to  the  tender  nursing  of  his 
second  mother,  and  the  comfort  and  peace  which  sur¬ 
rounded  him.  His  convalescence,  without  bringing  back 
the  memory  of  his  childhood,  restored  him  to  the  full  use  of 
his  other  faculties,  and  within  six  months  he  was  a  strong, 
healthy,  and  beautiful  boy  of  eight.  Eunice,  during  his 
illness,  had  opened  the  locket  round  his  neck,  and  ascer¬ 
tained  his  parentage  and  religion.  She  now  devoted  her¬ 
self  to  his  education.  Fearful,  nevertheless,  lest  some  one 
should  steal  or  take  away  perforce  her  treasure  from  her, 
she  accepted  a  position  of  trust  in  a  country  residence  ob¬ 
tained  for  her  by  her  benefactress.  There  she  had  not  been 
more  than  a  few  weeks  when  she  sickened  and  lay  at  death’s 
door  for  months.  The  boy,  whose  manly  character  began 
to  display  itself  in  this  extremity,  watched  over  her  whom 
he  called  his  mother  with  an  intelligence  that  won  the  ad¬ 
miration  of  their  masters,  and  tended  her  and  worked  for 
her  with  such  unwearied  love,  that  their  sympathies  were 
deeply  excited. 

It  was  while  thus  lavishing  on  his  adopted  parent  all  the 
tenderness  of  his  nature,  that  the  boy  formed  the  resolution 
of  supporting  her  by  his  industry,  and  of  working  till  he 
could  get  her  a  home  of  his  own.  The  kind  mistress  whom 
they  served  purchased  the  little  fellow  a  basket  or  pack 
Idled  with  needles,  thread,  and  some  more  costly  articles 
in  favor  with  ladies  and  serving-maids,  and  encouraged  him 
to  try  his  luck  first  of  all  in  her  own  mansion  and  among  her 
dependants,  and  then  among  her  lady  acquaintances  in  the 
near  neighborhood.  No  one  could  refuse  to  buy  from  the 
bright,  beautiful  boy,  whose  high  soul  shone  through  every 
feature, — so  that,  before  two  months  were  over,  he  had  in¬ 
creased  tenfold  not  only  his  stock  in  trade,  but  his  custom. 

The  invalid, — for  such  she  now  was, — could,  with  the 
aid  of  her  generous  friends,  venture  to  rent  a  small  but 
very  neat  house  in  the  neighboring  town,  and  set  up  a 


100 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


little  stationery  and  soft-ware  shop,  which  she  attended 
herself,  while  her  boy  extended  his  excursions  to  several 
populous  villages  of  the  district,  and  managed  to  make 
himself  useful  over  night  in  a  pottery,  whose  master  took  a 
great  liking  to  the  child. 

His  boyish  frame  was  unequal  to  this  excessive  fatigue, 
and  the  great  strain  on  the  nervous  system  of  one  who  was 
growing  very  rapidly,  brought  on  symptoms  of  brain  fever. 
He  could  afford  to  rest,  however,  for  his  heroic  devotion 
had  been  blessed,  and  the  little  shop  was  patronized  by 
rich  and  poor  alike,  who  felt  drawn  to  the  saintlike  widow 
and  her  orphan  charge. 

Up  to  that  moment,  Johann  had  scarcely  learned  to  read. 
During  the  fits  of  delirium  that  accompanied  this  last  ill¬ 
ness,  he  raved  continually  about  books  and  learning  a  trade 
and  going  to  America  to  make  a  fortune  for  his  dear  mother, 
as  he  ever  called  Eunice.  The  physician  who  attended 
him  was  so  touched  by  all  that  he  heard  about  the  pair, 
that  he  mentioned  the  matter  to  a  friend  of  his,  a  wealthy 
ship-owner  of  the  town,  who  was,  besides,  largely  interested 
in  the  lumber  trade  both  of  Canada  and  of  the  Pacific  coast. 
This  gentleman  called  on  Eunice,  found  Johann  much  bet¬ 
ter,  and  was  charmed  by  the  boy’s  manly  beauty,  intelli¬ 
gence,  and  spirit,  as  well  as  by  the  indescribable  magic  of 
Eunice’s  conversation  and  manner. 

He  became  henceforth  their  declared  protector.  Johann 
was  placed  as  an  errand-boy  in  the  ship-office,  and  sent 
three  days  in  the  week  to  an  excellent  school.  His  pro¬ 
gress  in  learning  was  prodigious.  He  seemed  to  know  by 
intuition  what  his  master  would  teach  him,  obtained  a  thor¬ 
ough  knowledge  of  arithmetic  and  algebra,  was  filled,  at  the 
sight  of  the  designs  and  plans  which  covered  the  walls  of 
his  benefactor’s  office,  with  a  thirst  for  acquiring  the  sci¬ 
ence  of  ship-building.  The  boy,  while  filling  the  functions 
of  confidential  secretary  to  the  head  of  the  firm,  was  allowed 
to  qualify  as  apprentice  in  the  trade  of  shipwright.  His 
salary,  which  his  employer  insisted  on  paying  him,  went 
to  make  Eunice  entirely  independent,  and  much  more  than 


NOBLE  DEVOTION  OF  A  SWISS  ORPHAN  BOY.  1Q1 


the  salary  went  to  the  same  purpose.  So  that  the  gentle 
sufferer  could  give  her  noble  boy  a  home  supplied  with  all 
the  restful  comforts  required  by  his  feverish  activity  of  brain 
and  body,  and  bestow,  besides,  large  alms  on  the  poor. 

Johann  was  thirteen  when  he  made  his  first  communion. 
This  event  produced  a  wonderful  change  in  one  who  was 
already  precocious  in  mind  and  character.  In  preparing 
himself  for  the  reception  of  the  Divine  Sacrament,  his  ten¬ 
derness  of  conscience  compelled  him  to  open  his  heart  to 
his  employer  about  several  peccadilloes  which  his  boyish 
temper  had  led  him  to  commit  since  he  had  entered  the 
office.  His  friend,  who  was  a  stanch  opponent  of  the 
Catholic  faith,  listened  in  amazement  to  this  accusation  of 
acts  in  which  not  a  trace  of  voluntary  guilt  could  be  dis¬ 
covered.  At  the  same  time  he  was  deeply  touched  by  the 
purity,  innocence,  truthfulness,  and  high  honor  revealed 
by  that  one  glance  into  a  soul  so  privileged. 

Johann  was  intrusted  with  the  most  confidential  part  of 
his  protector’s  correspondence,  and  sent  more  than  once  to 
London  on  errands  of  great  secrecy  and  importance.  Every¬ 
thing  he  undertook  succeeded  in  his  hands,  because  to  rare 
practical  judgment  and  natural  tact  he  joined  absolute  sin¬ 
gleness  of  purpose.  He  devoted  himself  entirely,  without 
a  thought  of  personal  vanity,  to  whatever  he  was  given  to 
do,  applying  his  whole  mind  to  it  because  it  was  his  duty. 
Nor  did  he  seem,  when  the  thing  was  done,  and  his  employer 
was  loud  in  his  praise,  that  he  had  done  anything  uncom¬ 
mon  or  what  anybody  else  would  not  have  done  as  well  as 
himself.  With  all  that,  the  boy  was  ever  ready  to  oblige 
every  person  around  him,  from  the  oldest  clerk  to  his  mas¬ 
ter’s  little  footboy.  Thus  it  happened  that  his  wonderful 
simplicity  and  the  absence  of  all  pride  in  his  conduct  made 
him  a  universal  favorite. 

His  rapid  advancement,  therefore,  made  him  no  enemies, 
and  lost  him  no  friends.  In  the  ship-yard  to  which  he  was 
drawn  by  an  irresistible  attraction,  he  seemed  to  understand 
everything  at  a  glance.  The  principles  of  the  science  of 
naval  construction,  the  nature  and  value  of  materials,  all 


102 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


were  grasped  by  his  marvelous  intellect  with  a  quickness 
and  sureness  that  made  learning  to  him  an  amusement. 

At  twenty  he  had  become  so  useful  to  his  kind  protector, 
so  indispensable  indeed  in  the  transaction  of  business  re¬ 
quiring  secrecy  and  dispatch,  that  he  was  made  a  junior 
partner  in  the  concern.  This  extraordinary  good  fortune 
made  no  change  either  in  Johann’s  outward  bearing  or  in 
his  interior  sentiments.  His  soul  seemed  tilled  with  reve¬ 
rence  and  gratitude  toward  his  benefactor,  and  devoted  love 
for  his  mother  ;  his  tender  piety  to  God  being  the  source  of 
his  affection  for  the  two  beings  on  earth  who  had  been  to 
him  the  images  and  instruments  of  the  divine  goodness. 

Thenceforward  his  history  was  one  of  continuous  and 
wonderful  success.  How  his  fertile  invention  discovered 
new  methods  for  improving  the  strength  and  velocity  of 
sailing  vessels, — for  steam  was  not  then  known;  how  he 
traveled  over  both  hemispheres  to  discover  the  richest  for¬ 
ests  and  to  establish  centers  for  the  vast  lumber  traffic  in 
which  his  house  was  engaged  ;  and  how,  wherever  he  went, 
his  winning  manners,  his  generosity  toward  his  subordinates 
and  workmen,  the  lively  interest  he  seemed  to  take  in 
every  individual,  and  the  mixture  of  gentleness  and  firm¬ 
ness  with  which  he  dealt  with  the  refractory  among  them, 
caused  his  presence  to  be  hailed  with  delight,  and  his  de¬ 
parture  to  be  regretted  as  a  personal  loss  by  every  man  in 
his  employment. 

One  fixed  purpose  ruled  his  conduct  toward  these, — to 
encourage  every  married  man  to  have  his  own  little  home, 
giving  them  such  wages  as  enabled  them  to  live  comfortably 
and  free  of  debt.  With  that,  he  would  provide  the  children 
with  schools  in  which  they  were  taught  the  elements  of  a 
good  common  education,  while  every  boy  able  to  be  appren¬ 
ticed  was  articled  to  some  good  master  tradesman  in  the 
shops  attached  to  his  manufactories  and  ship-yards.  Am¬ 
ple  provision  was  also  made  for  religious  instruction. 

His  chief  delight,  however,  was  to  see  the  home-life  and 
home-virtues  cherished  by  all  those  who  came  beneath  his 
control  or  influence,  or  were  the  recipients  of  his  bounty. 


THE  CASTAWAY  A  KING  OF  MEN. 


103 


In  a  thousand  ways,  as  his  young,  bright  face  passed  like  a 
sunbeam  through  the  industrial  villages  which  thrived  un¬ 
der  the  protection  of  his  house,  he  would  show  his  love  for 
children, — for  the  parentless  and  the  outcasts  particularly. 
They  were  somehow  drawn  to  him  by  a  powerful  magnet¬ 
ism  :  he  kept  a  list  of  all  such,  and  of  the  families  to  whom 
he  intrusted  them,  and  from  whom  he  took  especial  care 
that  they  received  most  kindly  treatment. 

In  these  good  works  every  shilling  he  could  spare  was 
spent.  His  own  home,  the  home  of  his  adopted  mother 
rather,  he  made  most  comfortable,  without  ever  adding  to 
it  anything  that  savored  of  luxury.  In  this  he  was  guided 
by  the  wishes  of  Eunice  as  well  as  by  his  own  inclination. 
There  was  in  their  dwelling  a  simplicity  that  was  not  with¬ 
out  its  elegance,  but  nothing  more.  Or,  if  there  was  any 
other  distinctive  feature  about  his  and  her  home,  it  was  in 
the  many  visitors  of  every  rank  who  came  to  honor  in  the 
saintly  invalid  the  woman  who  had  reared  such  a  noble 
son,  and  in  the  constant  coming  and  going  of  the  poor  and 
the  distressed  whose  need  was  relieved  quietly,  and  each 
one  of  whom  was  bidden  to  depart  noiselessly,  with  the  in¬ 
junction  of  the  Divine  Master,  “  See  thou  tell  no  one.” 

Johann  was  supremely  happy  in  seeing  his  mother  be¬ 
loved  and  reverenced.  He  had  obtained  the  legal  authority 
to  bear  her  maiden  name, — not  that  his  upright  nature  or 
manly  disposition  could  allow  him  to  blush  for  his  own, — 
but  because  he  gloried  in  owing  her  everything,  and  in  de¬ 
voting  to  her  the  life  she  had  preserved  and  helped  to  make 
so  honorable  and  so  useful.  He  could  not  bear  that  any 
steps  should  be  taken  either  to  punish  the  padrone  from 
whom  he  had  endured  such  horrible  cruelty,  or  that  the 
course  followed  by  his  step-father  should  be  ascertained  ; 
for  he  feared  that  the  discovery  of  his  guilt  might  rest  like 
a  stain  on  the  memory  of  his  dead  parent. 

Into  the  house  which  he  had  created  for  Eunice,  nothing 
could  induce  Johann  to  bring  a  bride.  His  love  for  his 
benefactress,  and  his  ardent  and  enlightened  charity  for  his 
laborers,  seemed  to  fill  his  heart  and  to  leave  no  place  for 


104 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


any  other  love.  He  was  in  his  thirtieth  year  when  she  was 
taken  from  him,  and  at  thirty,  hundreds  upon  hundreds  of 
homes  in  the  Old  World  and  the  New  blessed  him  for  their 
comfort  and  happiness.  Her  death  only  served  to  give  a 
mightier  impulse  to  his  indefatigable  activity  for  the  good 
of  others,  and  to  the  great  industries  of  which  he  was  the 
soul. 

We  shall  now  let  the  veil  drop  on  that  life,  which,  fruit¬ 
ful  as  it  was  in  noble  labors  crowned  with  success,  and 
in  countless  deeds  of  the  purest  beneficence,  would  never 
court  praise  or  publicity.  The  rain  which  is  a  blessing  to 
the  earth  and  crowns  the  most  fervent  prayers  of  the  hus¬ 
bandman,  is  not  that  which  the  heavens  send  down  like  a 
cataract  amid  the  flash  and  terror  of  the  lightning  and  the 
loud  roar  of  the  thunder-storm.  It  is  that  which  falls  as 
silently  and  gently  as  the  dew  at  midnight,  dropping  on  the 
parched  bosom  of  the  earth,  causing  the  seed  to  germinate, 
to  grow  up,  and  to  ripen,  — giving  new  life  to  the  drooping 
flower,  a  more  vivid  green  to  forest  and  field,  and  filling 
the  land  with  gladness. 

We  would  wish  the  voice  of  these  examples  to  reach 
thousands  of  boys,  who  know  that  they  are  born  to  toil, 
and  many  thousands  more  of  young  men  whose  hands  are 
hardened  by  toil, — so  that  its  eloquence  might  stir  their 
hearts  to  industry,  endurance,  and  perseverance  in  building 
up  a  home  that  God’s  angels  may  delight  to  visit,  good  men 
to  honor,  and  the  poor  to  bless  in  their  prayers. 

Should  there  be  among  our  readers  any  who  have  wasted 
the  golden  years  of  their  life,  created  nothing,  but  destroyed 
rather, — then  let  them  once  more  take  courage  and  begin 
again ! 

“Up,  mortal,  and  act,  while  the  angel  of  light 

Melts  the  shadows  before  and  behind  thee  ! 

Shake  off  the  soft  dreams  that  encumber  thy  might, 

And  burst  the  fool’s  fetters  that  bind  thee  ! 

Soars  the  skylark — soar  thou  ;  leaps  the  stream — do  thou  leap  ; 

Learn  from  nature  the  splendor  of  action. 

Plough,  harrow,  and  sow,  or  thou  never  shalt  reap  : 

Faithful  deed  brings  divine  benefaction. 


THE  CASTAWAY  A  MODEL  FOR  ALL . 


105 


‘  The  red  sun  has  rolled  himself  into  the  blue. 

And  lifted  the  mists  from  the  mountain  : 

The  young  hares  are  feasting  on  nectar  of  dew, 

The  stag  cools  his  lips  in  the  fountain, 

The  blackbird  is  piping  within  the  dim  elm, 

The  river  is  sparkling  and  leaping, 

The  wild  bee  is  fencing  the  sweets  of  his  realm. 

And  the  mighty- limbed  reapers  are  reaping. 

“  To  spring  comes  the  budding  ;  to  summer,  the  blush  ; 
To  autumn,  the  happy  fruition  ; 

To  winter,  repose,  meditation,  and  hush  ; 

But  to  man,  every  season’s  condition  ; 

He  buds,  blooms,  and  ripens  in  action  and  rest. 

As  thinker,  and  actor,  and  sleeper ; 

Then  withers  and  wavers,  chin  drooping  on  breast. 
And  is  reaped  by  the  hand  of  a  Reaper.”  * 


*  Robert  Buchanan,  ‘‘Wayside  Poesies.” 


CHAPTER  VI. 


UNHAPPINESS. 


Cato  tlie  Censor  held  that  there  was  more  merit  in  being  a  good  husband 
than  a  great  senator. — Plutarch. 

9  . 

To  the  farmer  nothing  is  more  important,  than  to  have 
near  his  house  an  unfailing  spring  of  water,  ready  to  his 
hand  during  the  longest  heats  of  summer  and  the  severest 
winter  frosts.  Hence,  the  first  thing  the  settlers  throughout 
our  vast  continent  attend  to,  after  they  have  found  a  tract 
of  rich,  arable  soil,  is  to  seek  for  a  stream  or  a  spring  of 
wholesome  water,  near  to  which  they  may  erect  their  home¬ 
stead.  To  turn  away  the  stream  or  to  poison  the  spring 
would  be  to  render  the  homestead  uninhabitable  •  it  would 
be  the  act  of  the  worst  of  enemies. 

What  an  enemy’s  hand  might  do  to  render  the  family 
home  intolerable,  the  head  of  the  family  himself  but  too 
often  does  to  poison  every  spring  of  domestic  happiness, 
and  thereby  to  destroy  or  imperil  the  very  existence  of  the 
family  itself. 

If  the  prosperous  farmer,  or  the  settler  struggling  with  the 
first  difficulties  of  the  forest  or  the  plains,  must  feel  grateful 
when  warned  against  criminal  designs  threatening  the  health 
and  life  of  his  family,  have  we  not  a  rig’ll  t  to  expect  atten¬ 
tion,  if  not  gratitude,  when  we  warn  heads  of  families 
against  foes  of  their  household  no  less  to  be  dreaded  ? 

Home  is  no  home,  and  home-life  at  best  but  a  long  “  pur¬ 
gatory,”  if  he  who  is  its  head  and  chief  ruler,  instead  of 
being,  by  his  devotion  to  its  every  interest,  by  his  self-con¬ 
trol  and  self-denying  virtues,  the  main  cause  of  comfort, 

106 


CAUSES  OF  DOMESTIC  MISERY. 


107 


peace,  security,  and  happiness,  becomes  by  his  imperfec¬ 
tions  or  his  vices,  the  source  of  all  unhappiness  to  his  dear 
ones. 

We  wish,  with  all  the  delicacy  and  charity  of  a  priestly 
heart  and  hand,  to  describe  briefly  the  principal  defects 
that  lead  to  discomfort,  discord,  misery,  and  wretchedness 
in  homes  where  God  intended  that  all  should  be  serenity, 
sunshine,  joy,  and  bliss  unalloyed. 

The  first  of  these, — one  which  it  should  be  the  struggle  of 
a  lifetime  to  overcome  and  eradicate,  is  infirmity  of  temper. 

Infirmity  of  Temper — Irascibility . 

Its  most  troublesome  forms  are  irritability  and  fault-find¬ 
ing.  Of  that  headlong  passionateness,  which  is  properly 
anger,  we  do  not  wish  to  say  much.  Proneness  to  anger, 
when  not  checked  in  childhood,  and  allowed  to  grow  up 
with  a  man’s  growth,  is  almost  as  ruinous  in  its  evil  exam¬ 
ple  and  in  its  consequences  to  the  professional  or  business 
man,  as  the  worst  forms  of  intemperance.  For  headlong 
anger  is  intoxication,  depriving  its  unhappy  subject  of  the 
use  of  his  reason,  rendering  him  incapable  of  using  aright, 
for  the  time  being,  any  of  his  mental  faculties  or  bodily 
senses.  Hence,  it  is  classed  by  theologians  and  moralists 
among  the  Seven  Capital  Sins, — among  those,  namely,  which 
are  the  fruitful  parents  of  crime  and  disorder. 

The  irascibility  or  irritability  we  point  out  here,  as  a 
thing  so  much  to  be  dreaded,  avoided,  and  courageously 
put  down,  is  only  a  milder  form  of  the  same  dreadful  dis¬ 
temper,  but  one  scarcely  less  hurtful  in  its  effects.  As  this 
is  not  a  moral  treatise,  we  can  only  point  out  the  remedy, — 
early  habits  of  self-control,  and  life-long  watchfulness  over 
this  domestic  foe  and  inseparable  companion, — a  watchful¬ 
ness  that  can  only  be  aptly  compared  to  that  kept  over  the 
movements  of  a  chained  mad  dog.  Loosen  the  chain  but 
for  a  moment,  and  you  feel  the  fangs  of  the  rabid  animal 
fixed  in  your  flesh,  and  its  poison  coursing  through  the 
blood  and  maddening  the  brain  itself. 


108 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


There  are  men  most  generous  in  every  other  way,  en¬ 
dowed  with  the  noblest  qualities  of  heart  and  mind, — whom 
this  unrepressed  infirmity  render  a  burthen  to  themselves 
and  an  intolerable  torture  to  all  around  them. 

We  have  known  a  young  husband  who  had  conquered  a 
most  honorable  social  position  and  no  less  honorable  wealth 
by  hard  labor  and  sterling  integrity,  who  had  won  the  ad¬ 
miration  and  warm  esteem  of  a  large  circle  of  distinguished 
men,  by  his  uncommon  ability  and  a  largeness  of  mind  and 
heart  still  more  uncommon.  He  also  won  the  admiration 
and  maiden  love  of  a  woman  not  less  gifted  than  himself  in 
mental  and  moral  excellence.  He  had  provided  for  her  a 
home  in  which  a  princess  might  be  proud  to  live,  so  elegant 
was  it  in  its  noble  simplicity,  so  exquisitely  adorned  with  all 
that  could  suit  the  most  cultivated  taste  or  charm  the  most 
poetical  fancy.  And  with  his  home,  his  wealth,  his  posi¬ 
tion,  and  his  name,  he  gave  her  a  heart  that  no  other  love 
had  ever  filled. 

Nevertheless,  six  months  of  wedded  life  had  not  elapsed, 
when  the  young  wife’s  love  began  to  wane,  and  with  her  love 
her  health  declined.  She  had  discovered  that  the  man, 
whom  she  had  chosen  from  among  a  crowd  of  admirers  and 
suitors,  and  to  whom  in  her  inexperience  she  looked  up  as 
to  one  far  above  herself  and  above  others,  was  one  subject 
to  that  baneful  and  humiliating  infirmity  of  an  irascible  and 
uncontrollable  temper. 

In  her  own  father’s  home,  she  had  never  once  beheld 
either  her  parents  or  her  brothers  giving  way  to  the  sudden 
and  unaccountable  outbursts  which  seemed  to  upset,  when 
she  least  expected  it,  the  soul  and  the  very  nature  of  her 
husband.  She  cowered  and  shrank  before  these  fierce  ex¬ 
hibitions  as  she  would  before  some  wild  beast  that  might 
have  leaped  suddenly  into  her  room  through  the  open  win¬ 
dow  or  doorway. 

Too  proud  to  resent  by  words,  expressions  or  acts  which 
degraded  her  and  lowered  her  husband  infinitely  in  her  es¬ 
timation,  she  could  only  weep  in  secret,  and  pray  to  God  to 
give  her  strength.  For  she  soon  felt  her  great  love  slipping 


THE  IRRITABLE  HUSBAND. 


109 


away  from  her,  like  the  dying  reverence  for  an  idol  de¬ 
throned  and  shattered  utterly. 

Her  husband  would  come  home  wearied  from  a  day  of 
professional  exhausting  toil,  his  whole  soul  frequently  over¬ 
strung  to  its  utmost  tension  by  mental  activity ;  and  she, 
in  the  long  hours  of  absence,  would  devise  a  thousand  loving 
artitices  to  cheat  him  of  his  weariness,  and  to  unbend  by 
sweet  distractions  the  mind  that  had  been  so  long  on  the 
stretch. 

He,  who  had  disciplined  himself  to  severe  self-control  in 
public  and  in  the  transaction  of  professional  business,  had 
never  taught  himself  in  the  privacy  of  his  hitherto  solitary 
home,  to  keep  a  strong  rein  over  his  temper.  He  had  not 
learned  that  the  true  gentleman  is  he  who  is  every  inch  and 
in  every  word  and  gesture  a  gentleman,  in  his  private  cham¬ 
ber  especially,  and  before  his  valet.  How  much  more  is  this 
true  of  the  Christian  !  And,  in  our  case,  how  much  more 
true  of  the  husband  ! 

A  wife  is  not  made  happy  or  heart-satisfied  by  being 
made  in  public  her  husband’ s  honored  companion,  on  whom 
he  bestows,  with  evident  affection  and  assiduity,  all  the 
marks  of  sincere  esteem  and  respect.  It  is  the  atmosphere 
of  their  privacy,  when  no  eye  is  on  them  but  that  of  God 
and  His  angels,  that  must  be  unclouded,  bright,  warm, 
blissful,  and  undisturbed  by  one  unseemly  word  or  act ; — 
this  alone  constitutes  a  wife’s  perfect  happiness.  She  must 
see  nothing  in  the  man  she  loves  utterly,  and  who  is  all  in 
all  to  her,  that  she  cannot  love,  admire,  respect.  If  the 
self-control  assumed  in  public  and  kept  on  like  a  mask 
while  beneath  the  public  gaze,  is  cast  aside  when  alone 
with  his  wife,  and  the  countenance  wears  the  distorted  form 
of  passion,  and  the  soul,  hitherto  serene  and  unruffled,  be¬ 
comes  all  at  once,  like  a  storm-tossed  sea,  hideous  with 
monstrous  forms  rising  from  the  depths  below, — then  is 
love  in  imminent  danger. 

Six  months  of  such  disappointment,  torture,  and  humili¬ 
ation  the  young  wife  endured,  without  ever  permitting  one 
word  of  complaint  or  remonstrance  to  escape  her,  or  without 


110  TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

relaxing  in  aught  her  daily  devices  for  her  husband’ s  com¬ 
fort  and  amusement,  when  an  unusually  violent  outburst  of 
irritability  brought  matters  to  a  crisis. 

They  had  been  invited  to  a  family  anniversary  in  the 
evening,  and  were  to  be  the  very  center  of  the  happy  circle. 
She  had  prepared  everything  for  her  husband  with  more 
than  ordinary  forethought,  wishing  him  to  rest  sweetly  on 
his  return  home  and  to  wear  his  best  looks  afterward  be¬ 
fore  the  assembled  family.  His  room  had  been  made  even 
brighter  and  pleasanter  than  usual,  and  a  bunch  of  the 
flowers  he  loved  best  had  been  daintily  gathered  and  ar¬ 
ranged  by  his  little  wife,  whose  hand  had  placed  a  thought 
of  love  in  every  flower  more  fragrant  than  its  own  perfume. 

He  came  in  very  much  exhausted.  It  was  an  intensely 
hot  day,  and  the  heat  told  heavily  on  a  nervous  system  that 
had  endured  great  strain  throughout  the  day.  He  was, 
however,  not  conscious  of  any  predisposition  to  irritability  ; 
he  met  his  wife  with  his  wonted  joyous  smile  and  affec¬ 
tionate  greeting  ;  partook  heartily  of  the  refreshment  which 
she  had  prepared,  kissed  the  sweet  and  fragrant  flowers 
on  his  dressing-case,  and  made  all  the  currents  in  the  young 
wife’s  veins  run  on  delightfully.  They  were  truly,  in  their 
sweet  rooms,  as  they  presently  began  to  dress  for  the  even¬ 
ing,  the  very  ideal  of  blissful-  connubial  love.  But,  all  at 
once,  some  shirt-buttons  would  not  tit,  and  there  were  hur¬ 
ried  words  of  impatience,  a  necktie  did  not  suit,  and  there 
was  a  muttered  oath  which  made  the  young  wife  start  in 
the  adjoining  room,  and  then  the  shoes  were  too  tight  and 
hurt  his  feet ;  in  tying  the  strings,  one  of  them  broke, 
and  the  shoe  itself  was  torn  off  the  foot  by  the  now  thor¬ 
oughly  enraged  man,  who  flung  it  from  him,  striking  with 
it  his  wife  as  she  was  coming  unperceived  to  quiet  and 
pacify  him.  There  was  a  scream,  and  as  he  looked  round 
he  saw  her  put  her  hand  to  her  face  •  and  sink  fainting 
against  the  doorpost.  The  shoe-heel  had  struck  her  vio¬ 
lently  on  the  temple,  cut  her,  and  the  blood  was  flowing 
copiously  on  the  white  dress  of  the  insensible  girl. 

To  seize  her  in  his  arms,  with  the  tenderest  words  of  grief 


A  GREAT  LIFE  MARRED  BY  IRRITABILITY. 


Ill 


and  love,  to  bear  her  to  her  bed,  summon  the  servants,  and 
do  all  he  could  to  restore  her  to  consciousness,  addressing 
her  the  while  in  the  most  affecting  terms  of  self -accusation 
and  reproach  ; — all  that  was  the  work  of  a  few  moments. 
The  maid  had  witnessed  the  accident,  and  told  the  other 
members  of  the  household  exactly  what  had  occurred.  So 
that  all  blamed  their  irascible  master  as  much  as  they  sym¬ 
pathized  with  their  fainting  mistress. 

She  had  opened  her  eyes  for  a  few  moments  to  see  her 
husband  kneeling  in  agony  by  her  bedside,  and  had  drawn 
his  head  toward  her  to  kiss  him  tenderly  but  mutely  ;  and 
then  she  sank  into  a  second  swoon  longer,  deadlier  than 
the  first.  Why  distress  the  reader?  The  young  wife  and 
mother  had  received  a  terrible  shock,  from  the  effects  of 
which  it  required  the  utmost  skill  of  her  physicians  to  save 
herself  and  her  babe. 

But  the  danger  to  both  caused  a  complete  revolution  in 
the  husband  and  father.  During  the  months  that  his  wife 
lay  helpless  on  her  bed  of  sickness,  he  had  vowed  to  God 
and  promised  his  own  soul  to  repress  at  once  and  forever 
that  irascibility  which  had  well-nigh  proved  fatal  to  her, 
whose  worth  he  never  knew  so  well  as  when  she  had  well- 
nigh  fallen  a  victim  to  his  own  ungoverned  passion. 

JSTot  one  unpleasant  incident  ever  afterward  dimmed  the 
serenity  or  clouded  the  brightness  of  their  most  happy  life. 
He  was  too  firm  a  believer  in  the  wonderful  ways  of  Provi¬ 
dence,  not  to  feel  that  the  dreadful  consequences  of  his  sin 
had  been  only  averted  by  supreme  human  skill  and  God’s 
merciful  kindness.  Thenceforward  he  showed  himself  the 
meekest  and  most  patient  of  men, — worshiped  by  his  ser¬ 
vants  for  his  gentleness  and  many  other  virtues ;  while  his 
grateful  wife  blessed  the  Heavenly  Father  for  having  made 
her  suffering  the  occasion  of  such  a  blissful  and  lasting 
change  in  her  loved  husband. 

A  Great  Life  marred  by  Irritability. 

Another  instance  of  the  effects  of  this  deplorable  irri¬ 
tability,  we  are  moved  to  mention  here,  because  the  man 


112 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


who  was  subject  to  it,  marred  thereby  a  life  of  magnifi¬ 
cent  promise.  Splendidly  gifted,  carefully  educated,  placed 
from  earliest  manhood  in  a  position  of  all  the  most  favorable 
to  the  exercise  of  his  great  natural  and  acquired  abilities, 
this  man,  whom  we  knew  and  loved  well,  disappointed  the 
expectations  of  his  family  and  the  prophecies  of  his  friends, 
— neutralizing  all  his  marvelous  gifts  of  head  and  heart  by 
this  single  ungovernable  passion,  and  ruining  all  the  good 
he  otherwise  did  by  this  excessive  irritability,  which  made 
him  pull  down  with  one  hand  the  fair  structure  he  had 
reared  with  the  other. 

Painfully  conscious  of  his  own  infirmity,  his  whole  life 
was  an  unavailing,  because  a  too  feeble,  struggle  against  his 
fell  enemy.  His  shining  qualities,  and  the  continual  oc¬ 
casion  of  using  them  imposed  on  him  by  his  profession, 
only  rendered  his  failing  the  more  conspicuous  to  others, — 
like  a  great  flaw  in  a  vase  of  the  most  superior  design  and 
workmanship,  or  a  fatal  crack  in  a  bell  of  extraordinary 
dimensions,  and  placed  aloft  ki  a  cathedral  tower  to  call  a 
whole  people  to  prayer  and  praise,  and  to  sound  abroad 
over  a  city  on  solemn  festivals  as  the  consecrated  voice  of 
Religion. 

It  is  but.  a  vain,  we  had  almost  said,  a  criminal,  excuse 
for  such  wayward  passionateness  and  unrepressed  irrita¬ 
bility,  in  any  man,  especially  in  educated  and  professional 
men,  to  say  that  it  is  a  disease,  inherited  with  one’ s  blood, 
and  increasing  in  intensity  with  age.  We  are  speaking  of 
men, — held  by  their  families,  their  neighbors,  and  the  pub- 
lie,  as  responsible  persons  in  all  the  ordinary  transactions 
of  life.  Responsible  to  God  they  most  assuredly  are,  for 
neglecting  to  repress  in  youth  and  early  manhood,  the 
enemy  within  the  house  of  their  soul, — whose  subjection 
and  annihilation  every  man  of  us  knows  he  can  achieve 
with  His  help  who  is  always  near  us  to  bestow  all  the 
strength  rendered  needful  by  our  own  most  extreme  in¬ 
firmity. 


THE  FAULT-FINDING  HUSBAND. 


113 


Fault-finding . 

Akin  to  this  fiery  disposition  of  the  irascible,  is  that  other 
of  fault-finding,  which  would  seem  to  attach  itself,  as  rust 
does  to  iron,  rather  to  cold  than  to  ardent  natures.  It 
is  even  a  more  hateful  infirmity  than  wrathfulness.  For, 
without  pretending  to  excuse  or  extenuate  the  guilt  of  the 
passionate  and  the  irascible,  we  may  remark,  that  it  is  the 
fault  of  souls  generous,  loving,  devoted,  and  self-sacrificing 
in  a  great  measure  :  it  may  even  be  said  to  be  the  excess  or 
the  defect  of  some  of  the  most  admirable  qualities  in  human 
nature.  Not  so  with  the  odious  disposition  toward  fault¬ 
finding.  It  belongs  to  selfish,  narrow,  ungenerous  natures, 
as  cold  as  the  cuttle-fish  which  seizes  with  its  long  arms 
upon  all  that  comes  within  its  reach,  and  mangles  them 
without  pity  or  discrimination.  Fishermen  on  the  coast  of 
France,  often  haul  in  with  the  wholesome  fish  in  their  nets 
some  of  the  young  of  this  destructive  species.  If  they  hap¬ 
pen  to  leave  them  together  in  the  boat  or  on  shore  for  a 
single  night,  it  is  ten  to  one  but  they  will  find  on  the  mor¬ 
row  all  their  choicest  fish  utterly  ruined  and  emptied  of 
their  substance  by  the  merciless  and  voracious  cuttle-fish. 

The  fault-finding  husband,  in  like  manner,  wears  out 
the  life  and  destroys  little  by  little  the  happiness  of  his 
wife  and  entire  household.  A  wife  may  exert  herself  to  the 
utmost  to  govern,  regulate,  and  brighten  the  home,  to 
make  its  interior  the  very  picture  of  comfort,  peace,  and 
restfulness ;  she  may  call  forth,  as  much  through  the 
promptings  of  true  love,  as  from  a  deep  and  pure  sense 
of  duty,  all  her  skill  to  please,  to  amuse,  to  cheer  and 
charm  her  husband.  She  may  be  in  heart  and  disposition, 
as  well  as  in  person  and  appearance,  an  angel  welcoming 
her  wearied  companion  to  the  joy  and  repose  of  her  para¬ 
dise  :  of  what  avail  will  her  every  grace  and  charm  be 
against  the  icy  manner,  the  cold  sneer,  and  the  cruel  words 
of  dispraise,  which  are  the  only  answer  to  her  warm  wel¬ 
come,  the  only  return  for  the  loving  forethought  and  care 


114 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


and  labor  bestowed  on  making  tbe  home  bright  and  sunny 
for  his  coming  % 

There  are  men  who  are  indefatigable  workers,  clear-headed 
and  successful  business-men, — who  take  real  pride  and  plea¬ 
sure  in  providing  for  wife  and  children  a  home  lacking  no 
element  of  outward  respectability  and  creature  comfort ; — 
men,  too,  who  do  not  seek  distraction,  amusement,  or  dis¬ 
tinction  outside  of  their  home.  And  yet  these  men  have 
the  talent  of  making  their  homes  hateful  to  the  children  for 
whom  they  labor,  hateful  to  wife  and  servants  and  friends, — 
because  they  pass  over  a  thousand  praiseworthy  things  in 
their  wife’s  management,  in  their  children’s  proficiency,  in 
the  conscientious  labor  of  their  servants,  to  seize  upon  the 
one  little  defect  that  appears  to  them  blameworthy.  Their 
wife’s  warm  greeting  is  sneered  at  as  affectation  and  de¬ 
monstrativeness,  and  her  reserve  as  a  want  of  proper  affec¬ 
tion.  The  soup  on  the  table  is  always  either  too  hot  or  too 
cold,  the  roast-beef  overdone  or  too  rare,  the  tea  and  coffee 
either  too  strong  or  too  weak  ; — and  these  criticisms  are  all 
the  more  liberally  indulged  in  that  there  are  the  more 
present  at  table.  Indeed,  friends  or  strangers  dining  there 
for  the  first  time,  would  be  induced  to  believe  from  their 
host’s  liberal  dispraise  of  everything,  that  the  poor  wife 
was  the  most  careless  or  the  most  incapable  of  managers, 
the  cook  the  most  ignorant  or  stupid  of  kitchen-knaves, 
and  the  servants  chosen  from  among  the  most  unservice¬ 
able  of  the  tribe. 

In  the  drawing-room  the  music  is  treated  in  the  same 
illiberal  manner  as  the  cooking.  What  is  sung  or  played 
grates  on  the  ear  of  'paterfamilias ;  and  the  daughter  is 
asked  to  play  something  she  has  never  practiced,  or  the 
son  to  sing  a  melody  he  has  never  studied.  So  that  all 
desire  of  improvement, — so  far  as  the  head  of  the  house 
can  do  so, — is  effectually  quenched  in  the  bosom  of  wife, 
and  children,  and  servants. 

Of  what  avail  is  the  most  devoted  attention  to  business, 
the  most  encouraging  and  remunerative  success  in  one’s 
profession,  or  the  bestowal  on  one’s  family  of  all  the  means 


PETTINESS  OF  FA  ULT-FINDING. 


115 


of  physical  comfort  and  liberal  education, — if  the  home  is 
made,  by  constant  and  indiscriminate  fault-finding,  like  a 
darksome  ice-cave  in  which  not  one  little  bud  of  heartfelt 
joyousness  will  dare  to  unfold  itself  ? 

Nor  is  this  the  worst.  Indeed,  it  is  only  a  very  softened 
picture  of  the  home  of  the  fault-finder.  We  know  of  one 
man,  married  in  his  first  youth  to  one  of  the  loveliest  girls, 
and  belonging  to  one  of  the  very  best  families  in  a  great 
State, — who  made  life  so  intolerable  to  his  devoted  and  ac¬ 
complished  young  wife,  that  it  broke  her  heart,  ruined  her 
health,  and  sent  her  an  incurable  maniac  to  the  insane 
asylum,  while  he  still  primes  it  at  political  meetings,  or 
shines  as  a  star  of  the  first  magnitude  in  the  most  fashion¬ 
able  circles. 

Moodiness. 

A  third  form  of  ill  temper  is  moodiness.  For  there  are 
men  who  have  succeeded  in  quelling  the  fierce  outbreaks  of 
anger  and  impatience,  who  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  set 
a  strong  guard  upon  their  tongue,  restraining  the  wrathful, 
censorious,  or  sarcastic  utterances  which  caused  so  much 
pain  to  others,  and  so  often  wounded  both  justice  and  char¬ 
ity.  But  the  very  effort  required  to  keep  down  the  rebel¬ 
lious  spirit  within,  or  the  desire  of  avoiding  the  occasion  of 
giving  way  in  word  or  deed  to  their  effervescent  feelings, 
would  induce  these  mistaken  souls  to  seek  complete  isola¬ 
tion,  or  to  preserve  a  moody  and  obstinate  silence,  not  a 
whit  the  less  irksome  to  others  than  the  open  violence,  or 
the  bitter  invective  to  which  they  were  wont  to  yield. 

Moody  people  thus  only  take  refuge  from  one  weakness 
in  another,  like  the  victims  of  Asiatic  cholera,  who  only 
escape  the  fatal  grip  of  the  dire  pestilence  to  succumb  to 
typhus  fever. 

Moodiness  takes  several  forms  in  different  men,  and  not 
unfrequently  in  the  same  man.  The  moody  husband  will 
be  all  smiles  and  cheerfulness  one  day,  like  a  sunbeam  to 
the  hearts  of  wife  and  children  ;  but  the  very  next  day  he 
will  be  all  gloom,  and  silence,  and  storm.  In  the  morning 


116 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


he  will  leave  his  home  the  pleasantest  of  men,  but  will  re¬ 
turn  in  the  evening  the  most  disagreeable  and  troublesome. 

His  moods  come  and  go  as  unaccountably  and  as  sudden¬ 
ly  as  the  changes  in  an  April  sky.  Just  as  the  traveler 
never  knows  if  he  can  trust  the  fair  promise  of  a  sunny 
morning  at  that  uncertain  season,  and  will,  if  he  be  wise, 
not  go  forth  without  waterproof  or  umbrella  ;  even  so  those 
who  live  with  a  moody  man  can  never  trust  to  his  present 
temper,  though  all  smiles  and  serenity,  but  have  to  be  al¬ 
ways  armed  with  patience  and  forbearance,  so  as  not  to  be 
surprised  and  overwhelmed  by  the  suddenness  and  violence 
of  his  change  from  sweet  to  sour,  from  mildness  to  the 
downpouring  of  wrath. 

Nor  is  it  easy  to  say  when  such  a  man  is  more  unbearable, 
— when  he  suddenly  gives  way  to  successive  or  continuous 
spasms  of  ill  humor,  censoriousness,  and  impatience,  keep¬ 
ing  his  whole  household  in  a  ferment  for  days,  and  commu¬ 
nicating  to  wife  and  children  and  servants  his  own  ague- 
tits  of  interior  wretchedness, — or  when  he  subsides  into 
a  gloomy  silence  lasting  day  after  day,  and  making  the 
atmosphere  of  his  home  as  unendurable  as  the  darkness 
and  cold  and  oppressive  stillness  of  a  long  night  near  the 
Pole. 

Surely  such  moral  and  mental  infirmity  in  a  man  often 
proud  of  his  gifts,  his  position,  and  reputation, — is  as  bane¬ 
ful  to  the  comfort  and  happiness  of  all  around  him  as  would 
be  the  frequent  and  persistent  visitations  of  some  odious 
disease,  which  would  torture  every  outward  and  inward 
sense  without  destroying  or  endangering  life. 

A  Notable  Example  of  Moodiness. 

One  memorable  example  may  suffice  to  show  such  per¬ 
sons  how  fearful  and  utter  is  the  ruin  caused  in  the  wealthi¬ 
est  and  most  refined  home,  as  well  as  in  the  lowliest  and 
poorest,  by  this  unchecked  moodiness. 

Two  of  the  most  distinguished  families  in  one  of  our  Mid¬ 
dle  States  had  cemented,  as  they  fondly  thought,  a  deep 


A  NOTABLE  EXAMPLE  OF  MOODINESS. 


117 


and  ancient  friendship  by  marrying  an  only  son  to  an  only 
daughter,  both  the  idols  of  their  respective  parents,  and 
both  to  all  appearance  most  worthy  of  their  utmost  affec¬ 
tion.  The  young  gentleman  was  a  graduate  of  West  Point, 
clever,  accomplished,  well  mannered,  of  a  handsome  per¬ 
son,  winning  and  courtly  address, — such  a  man,  indeed,  as 
would  most  powerfully  attract  a  young,  innocent,  and  art¬ 
less  girl,  w  ho  had  never  learned  to  fear  the  angry  and  fit¬ 
ful  depths  that  may  lie  behind  the  bright  sky  of  an  open, 
handsome  face. 

Innocent,  artless,  in  very  truth,  most  beautiful  and  most 
graceful,  was  the  bride  which  the  handsome  and  wealthy 
West-Pointer  had  won ; — and  all  who  knew  him  not  inti¬ 
mately,  prophesied  that  the  union  would  be  most  blissful. 
There  wrere  some,  however,  who  knew  well  how  uncertain 
w^as  the  calm  self-possession  the  young  bridegroom  could 
assume,  how7  changeful  was  the  serenity  of  that  brow,  and 
how  treacherous  the  bright  smile  which  he  had  ever  wTorn 
before  his  bride.  His  parents  w7ere  but  too  painfully  con¬ 
scious  of  the  fitful  passionateness  that  lurked  beneath  that 
fascinating  exterior.  But  their  religion  had  not  taught 
them  the  duty  of  acquainting  the  intended  bride  or  her 
parents  with  the  capital  defects  or  vices  that  might  imbit- 
ter  the  life  and  ruin  the  happiness  of  a  wife.  Alas  !  there 
are  but  too  many  parents  who  believe  this  to  be  their  duty, 
and  nevertheless  neglect  it,  thereby  making  shipwreck  of 
the  lives  and  not  seldom  of  the  souls  of  the  innocent  and 
unsuspecting. 

Not  a  week  of  the  honeymoon  had  elapsed  when  the 
beautiful  bride,  so  proud  of  her  brilliant  husband,  and  so 
wrapped  up  in  his  happiness,  made  the  discovery  of  the 
moodiness  that  was  to  be  her  bane.  In  the  very  midst  of 
the  joyous  festivities  gotten  up  in  their  honor  by  devoted 
relatives  and  admiring  friends, — the  most  trifling  accident 
wrould  call  forth  a  fit  of  sullenness,  gloom,  and  silence, — 
like  a  thunder-clap  from  a  summer  sky,  or  the  instantaneous 
gathering  of  dark  storm-clouds  over  the  face  of  the  bright¬ 
est  noonday. 


118 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


The  young  wife  had  brought  from  her  home  and  inherited 
from  her  mother  that  deep  tenderness  and  patient  love, 
which  can  perform  miracles  of  devotion  and  self-sacrifice. 
She  loved  her  husband  with  her  whole  heart,  for  she  had 
clothed  him  with  all  the  perfections  of  her  cherished  ideal. 
And  she  was  very  slow  to  admit  that  her  husband’s  iong 
and  distressing  fits  of  alternate  irritability  and  sullen  moodi¬ 
ness,  were  not  the  consequences  of  some  hidden  distemper, 
— of  a  mind  overtaxed  by  too  close  application,  or  of  nerves 
disordered  by  the  long  and  severe  dicipline  of  a  military 
school, — instead  of  being  the  outgrowth  of  peevishness,  way¬ 
wardness,  and  ill  temper,  allowed  to  spring  up  unchecked 
in  an  only  son  by  a  mother’ s  fatal  indulgence. 

With  the  complete  forgetfulness  of  self,  and  the  unlimited 
devotion  to  the  comfort  and  pleasure  of  the  loved  object, 
that  are  the  very  soul  of  wifely  affection,  she  devised  and 
exhausted,  week  after  week,  and  month  after  month,  all 
the  sweet  industries  by  which  a  woman  can  soothe  the 
pangs  of  both  body  and  spirit  ;  but  all  were  to  no  purpose. 
The  hopes  she  fondly  clung  to,  that  the  overstrained  mind 
should  soon  recover  its  balance,  that  the  endearments  of 
her  beautiful  affection  and  the  peace  and  quiet  of  her  beau¬ 
tiful  home,  would  calm  the  disordered  nerves  and  soften 
every  asperity  of  temper, — disappeared  one  by  one  ;  and 
the  dreadful  reality  stared  her  in  the  face,  that  she  was 
united  to  a  man,  whose  moods  were  as  sudden,  as  uncertain, 
as  destructive  of  all  happiness  and  home-life, — as  those  of 
a  lunatic. 

So  with  her  hopes  her  love  waned,  constantly  increasing 
dread  and  despair  filling  up  their  place  in  the  young  heart. 
She  bore  up  against  all  her  ills  for  years,  however,  without 
complaining  to  parent  or  friend.  She  had  looked  forward 
to  the  birth  of  her  first  babe,  as  to  an  event  which  might 
stimulate  her  wayward  husband  to  serious  efforts  at  self¬ 
amendment,  or  at  least  awaken  in  his  soul  new  affections,  a 
new  sense  of  responsibility,*  and  deep  reflections  on  the  pains 
he  had  caused  the  mother  of  his  child,  and  on  the  clouds 
his  temper  had  cast  over  the  first  stage  of  their  wedded  life. 


A  NOTABLE  EXAMPLE  OF  MOODINESS. 


119 


Whatever  regrets  for  the  past  may  have  visited  him,  or 
whatever  transient  resolves  he  may  have  formed,  they  did 
not  outlive  the  rejoicings  which  welcomed  the  arrival  of  the 
son  and  heir.  Three  other  children  were  sent  to  cheer  the 
young  mother ;  and  with  the  birth  of  each  the  dying  root 
of  love  and  wifely  trust  would  put  forth  a  few  timid  leaves, 
— so  fondly  will  a  woman’s  heart  persist  in  hoping  against 
hope  itself ! 

At  length  she  sank  beneath  the  intolerable  load  of  ills 
which  she  had  borne  so  silently  and  uncomplainingly.  Her 
father  had  watched  her  drooping  form  and  spirit,  and  his 
intercourse  with  his  son-in-law,  as  well  as  the  indignation 
caused  among  their  neighbors  and  acquaintances  by  the  ill 
conduct  of  the  latter,  forced  the  parent  to  interfere  and 
save  the  life  of  his  child. 

It  was  too  late.  All  the  tenderness  of  her  mother,  all  the 
devoted  care  of  brothers  and  sisters,  all  the  caresses  of  her 
little  daughters  who  would  not  be  separated  from  her,  were 
alike  powerless  to  arrest  the  progress  of  a  disease,  the  seat 
of  which  was  in  the  heart.  She  pined  away,  and  died 
broken-hearted. 

Her  husband  retained  his  son  with  him  in  the  now  deso- 
late  and  widowed  home.  But  not  even  that  desolation  in 
all  its  utterness  could  change  that  proud  spirit,  or  rouse  it 
to  repent  of  its  selfishness,  or  to  exorcise  from  his  hearth 
the  fiend  that  had  changed  all  its  joy  into  mourning  and 
blighted  all  the  fair  blossoms  of  early  connubial  love. 

The  widowed  husband  wrapped  closer  around  himself  the 
dark  and  forbidding  garment  of  his  moodiness  and  sullen 
perverseness  of  temper.  His  daughters  had  chosen  to  cast 
their  lot  with  their  dead  mother  ;  thenceforward  they  were 
dead  to  him.  His  son  had  clung  to  the  paternal  roof  with 
the  hope  of  inheriting  the  paternal  estate.  He,  too,  grew 
up  to  be  a  young  man  of  fair  abilities,  handsome  presence, 
and  engaging  manners. 

The  father,  growing  wearied  of  the  intolerable  solitude 
and  desolation  which  surrounded  him,  thought,  in  one  of 
his  softening  moods,  that,  if  his  son  married  happily,  the 


120 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


home  might  again  be  brightened  by  young  faces  and  glad¬ 
dened  by  pleasant  sounds.  Till  then,  although  he  had 
given  his  boy  a  good  education,  he  had  nevertheless  afforded 
him  no  opportunity  of  turning  it  to  any  useful  purpose. 
The  allowance  made  to  the  young  man  barely  sufficed  to 
clothe  him  decently,  without  permitting  him  to  indulge  in 
any  of  the  most  innocent  recreations  of  persons  of  his  own 
age. 

What  then  was  his  astonishment,  when,  one  morning,  at 
the  breakfast  table,  his  father  asked  him  if  he  had  never 
thought  of  marrying ?  “I  should  be  happy  to  see  you 
settled  in  life,  my  son,”  he  continued.  “  For  the  house  is 
rather  dull  for  one  of  your  age,  and  has  been  a  long  time 
without  pleasant  company.”  “But,  father,”  returned  the 
other,  “I  have  at  present  no  means  of  my  own,  and  am, 
therefore,  entirely  unable  to  support  a  wife.  That  I  have 
not  sought  to  enter  on  the  active  duties  of  any  profession, 
is  due  to  your  own  desire.  ”  .  .  .  “  Let  that  be  no  obstacle 
to  your  marriage,”  the  father  replied;  “I  shall  gladly 
furnish  you  immediately  with  the  money  necessary  for 
your  equipment,  and  shall  advance  you,  on  your  marriage, 
ten  thousand  dollars  or  more,  to  enable  you  to  practice 
your  profession  independently.  Have  you  found  no  young 
lady  who  could  make  you  a  good  wife?”  Yes,  the  son 
had  been  thrown  into  the  company  of  a  charming  young 
person,  belonging  to  a  most  honorable  family,  and  there 
had  sprung  ujd  a  warm  alfection  between  them.  Acting, 
therefore,  on  his  father’s  urgent  advice,  the  young  man 
asked  his  lady-love  to  become  his  wife,  was  accepted  by 
her  and  her  parents,  and  everything, — as  his  father  had 
desired, — was  arranged  for  their  speedy  marriage. 

Returning  home  without  a  moment’s  delay,  his  soul  full 
of  joy  and  triumph,  he  informed  his  parent  of  his  success, 
and  of  the  arrangement  made  for  the  nuptials.  The  latter 
received  these  tidings  without  any  sign  of  pleasure  or  inter¬ 
est,  acquiescing  apparently  in  what  his  boy  had  done,  but 
saying  not  one  word  about  advancing  any  money  for  the 
necessary  expenses  of  the  wedding.  He  had  relapsed  into 


A  NOTABLE  EXAMPLE  OF  MOODINESS. 


121 


one  of  liis  blackest  moods,  and  his  son  did  not  dare  to  press 
him  by  untoward  questions  or  demands  for  money,  while  the 
cloud  was  on  him. 

So,  with  the  aid  of  some  generous  relative  he  was  able  to 
meet  the  needful  outlay,  and  was  married,  his  father  excus¬ 
ing  himself,  under  some  pretext  or  other,  from  being  pres¬ 
ent  at  the  nuptials.  He  could  not  bring  his  bride  home  at 
once,  both  because  he  was  obsoluteiy  penniless,  and  be¬ 
cause  he  was  not  sure  of  her  getting  a  warm  welcome  from 
his  capricious  parent.  When  he  appeared  before  the  latter, 
however,  he  told  his  tale  simply,  and  begged  his  father  to 
execute  the  promise  kindly  made  of  advancing  the  money 
necessary  to  set  him  up  in  his  profession. 

“  I  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  your  marriage,”  was  the 
startling  reply  ;  ‘  ‘  and  I  mean  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
providing  for  yourself  or  your  wife.  I  owe  you  nothing,  and 
shall  give  you  nothing.”  “  But,  dear  father,”  the  other 
forced  himself  to  say  ;  “  it  was  at  your  own  solicitation  that 
I  sought  a  wife,  and  acting«on  your  promise  of  a  liberal  set¬ 
tlement,  I  have  taken  the  woman  I  loved,  and  with  your  ex¬ 
press  approval.  What  am  I  to  do  1  ”  “  Do  what  you  like,” 
was  the  brutal  rejoinder  ;  “it  is  no  concern  of  mine.  Ho 
man  has  any  business  to  marry  who  cannot  support  his 
wife.” 

These  words  at  first  almost  threw  the  wretched  bridegroom 
into  a  fit  of  despair.  He  knew  it  to  be  useless  to  make  any 
further  representation  to  the  heartless  parent,  who  seemed 
only  to  have  deceived  his  own  child  for  the  express  purpose 
of  torturing  him.  He  left  his  father’s  home  that  day,  never 
again  to  return  to  it,  and  set  himself  manfully  to  work  to 
support  his  young  wife  and  create  a  home ,  for  themselves 
and  their  children.  It  was  a  hard  and  a  long  struggle  ;  but 
he  succeeded. 

Meanwhile  his  moody  and  self-tormenting  father  was 
more  wretched  than  ever  in  his  cheerless  abode.  The  same 
perverseness  which  steeled  him  against  the  most  touching 
demonstrations  of  his  young  wife’ s  love,  now  prevented  him 
from  making, — much  as  he  desired  it, — any  advances  to  his 


122 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


alienated  children.  He  would  have  given  his  entire  fortune 
and  many  years  of  his  life  to  have  them  once  more  back  in 
his  loveless,  comfortless  home.  As  if,  in  very  truth,  an  evil 
spirit  possessed  him,  urging  him  to  repel  all  show  of  affec¬ 
tion  from  his  friends  and  obliging  him  to  withstand  the 
yearnings  of  his  own  fatherly  affection,  he  lived  on  unloved 
and  unhonored,  and  died  as  he  had  lived, — the  destroyer  of 
his  home. 


CHAPTER  VII. 


HOME  DESTROYERS  (CONTINUED). 


Look  in  my  face  ;  my  name  is  Might-have-been  ; 

I  am  also  called  No  More, — Too-late, — Farewell ; 

Unto  thine  ear  I  hold  the  dead  sea  shell. 

Cast  up  thy  Life’s  foam-fretted  feet  between  ; 

Unto  thine  eyes  the  glass  where  that  is  seen 
Which  had  Life’s  form  and  Love’s,  hut  by  my  spell 
Is  now  a  shaken  shadow  intolerable, 

Of  ultimate  things  unuttered  the  frail  screen. 

Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti. 

We  have  seen  a  few  of  the  dark  foes  whom  the  Enemy 
of  God  and  man  leagues  with  himself  and  his  fallen  angels 
to  mar  all  the  most  merciful  designs  of  the  Creater  on  hu¬ 
man  society, — on  the  Home,  especially,  which  is  or  ought 
to  be  the  nursery  of  Godlike  manhood. 

Within  the  Earthly  Paradise,  as  its  Divine  Author 
planned  it  in  the  beginning,  we  know  how  many  perennial 
fountains  of  live-giving  waters  gushed  forth  and  made  ever¬ 
lasting  springtide  in  the  place. 


“  Through  veins 

Of  porous  earth  with  kindly  thirst  up  drawn. 

Rose  a  fresh  fountain,  and  with  many  a  rill 

Watered  the  garden  ;  thence  united  fell 

Down  the  steep  glade,  and  met  the  nether  flood,  .  .  . 

And  now  divided  into  four  main  streams 
Runs  divers.”  .  .  . 

There,  too,  was  the  Tree  of  Life,  yielding  man,  by  a  loving 
provision  of  his  Maker,  the  healthful  nourishment  that  fed 
every  vital  source  in  the  body,  while  keeping  every  faculty 

123 


124 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


of  the  soul  fresh  and  disposed  for  all  the  labor  of  intel¬ 
lectual  life. 

Why  will  man,  instead  of  enjoying  beneath  the  shadow 
of  God’s  wings,  all  these  manifold  sources  of  health,  and 
sweetness,  and  strength,  and  joy,  turn  his  back  on  God  and 
them,  and  follow  the  beckoning  of  his  soul’s  enemies,  to 
seek  outside  his  little  paradise,  false  pleasure,  food  that 
poisons  both  soul  and  body,  misery,  degradation,  and  death  ? 

Let  not  the  reader,  however,  misinterpret  the  lesson  of 
the  Divine  Book,  or  misunderstand  what  is  sought  to  be 
here  conveyed.  We  are  but  too  apt  to  attribute  to  the  hid¬ 
den  working  of  the  Evil  One  or  his  allied  spirits,  the  moral 
degradation  and  temporal  ruin  wrought  around  us  in  the 
lives  and  homes  of  men  by  their  oicn  sin ,  originating  in 
their  own  mind  and  heart,  and  consummated  by  their  own 
free  will,  in  spite  of  the  lights  and  warning  voice  of  con¬ 
science. 

Of  course,  we  do  not  and  cannot  deny  it, — for  it  is  the 
plain  sense  of  God’ s  revealed  word  both  in  the  Old  and  in 
the  New  Testament, — man  is  assailed  by  his  inveterate  and 
sleepless  Foe  in  many  ways,  and  has,  as  well,  much  to  fear 
from  the  seductive  words  and  examples  of  his  fellow-men. 
Nevertheless,  his  true  danger  lies  within  his  own  heart :  he 
is,  himself,  his  own  greatest  enemy. 

Hence,  for  once  that  our  temptation  and  the  occasion  of 
our  fall  come  from  without ,  ten  times,  a  hundred  times, 
the  sole  cause  of  our  sin  and  its  consequences  may  be  traced 
to  ourselves.  The  guilty  thought  and  imagination  are  the 
spontaneous  growth  of  our  own  soul,  as  well  as  the  subse¬ 
quent  resistance  to  conscience,  and  the  final  full  and  free 
consent  given  to  evil. 

There  is  nothing  more  pitiful  in  the  brief  story  of  the 
downfall  and  arraignment  of  our  First  Parents,  as  plainly 
told  in  Genesis, — than  Adam’s  shifting  the  guilt  off  his  own 
shoulders  to  his  companion’s,  and  her  imitation  of  her  hus¬ 
band’  s  pusillanimity  and  cowardice,  in  throwing  the  blame 
on  the  Serpent. 

In  this  prevaricating  weakness,  we  all  show  our  ourselves 


MAN  EI8  OWN  TEMPTER . 


125 


but  too  truly  the  offspring  of  these  great  criminals, — by 
transferring  to  the  Tempter  the  primal  blame  for  our  mis¬ 
deeds.  Alas, — if  we  look  well  into  our  own  soul  and  the 
truthful  record  of  our  own  conscience,  we  shall  most  surely 
find  that  we  are,  ourselves,  our  own  worst  tempters,  and, 
most  frequently,  our  sole  tempters. 

Let  us  have  the  courage,  then,  to  call  our  soul  to  a 
candid  account  for  our  transgressions.  In  looking  into  our 
own  consciousness,  and  scrutinizing  impartially  the  causes 
that  have  led  to  make  of  our  lives  a  something  so  different 
from  what  God  had  designed  and  we  had  once  hoped  our¬ 
selves, — we  shall  find  that  our  own  hands  have  marred  the 
plan  of  God  and  of  the  nature  He  so  richly  endowed. 
There  is  not  one  of  us, — when  some  sudden  illness  or  cata¬ 
strophe  places  the  soul  on  the  verge  of  eternity, — to  whom 
conscience  does  not  hold  up  the  twofold  truthful  image  of 
what  “I  am”  and  what  I  “  Might-have-been.”  Beneath 
the  all-revealing  splendor  of  that  light  which  issues  from 
the  near  Judgment  Seat,  I  cannot  help  seeing,  with  over¬ 
whelming  evidence,  what  God  designed  me  to  be,  with  all 
the  possibilities  placed  by  Him  at  my  disposal, — and  side 
by  side  with  that  most  loving  and  glorious  plan,  stands 
staring  me  in  the  face,  that  other  image  of  what  I  have 
made  myself.  All  my  past  life,  with  its  misused  graces 
and  lost  opportunities,  like  a  horrible  reflection  of  myself, 
cries  out  to  me  : 

“  Look  in  my  face  :  my  name  is  Might-iiave-been.” 

I  seem,  as  the  last  waves  of  time,  receding  for  ever,  leave 
me  stranded  on  the  beach,  to  stand  upon  the  shore  of  the 
Dead  Sea  of  all  my  hopes,  in  which  lie  buried  opportuni¬ 
ties,  graces,  untold  treasures  of  strength  vouchsafed  to  lift 
me  up  to  God’s  own  level, — and  just  as  the  foam  of  the  last 
wave  frets  my  feet,  my  own  heart  is  like  a  shell  picked  up 
from  that  desolate  strand  ;  and  holding  it  to  my  ear,  I  hear 
within  it  the  echo  of  that  abyss  of  time  over  which  I  have 
passed  in  vain.  And  the  sound  it  brings  to  me,  says  :  For 
thee  time  is  “No  More!”  Thou  wouldst  fain  profit  of 


126 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


graces  and  opportunities,  when  it  is  all  “  Too  Late.”  Thou 
wouldst  live  as  becometh  a  child  of  God,  a  fellow-citizen  of 
the  Angels,  a  dweller  in  the  Heavenly  Jerusalem, — when  it 
is  all  in  vain:  thou  must  perforce  bid  “ Farewell”  to  the 
society  of  the  Angels,  to  the  bliss  of  the  Supernal  City,  and 
to  that  God  who  is  their  light  and  their  love, — to  all  an 
eternal  “Farewell !”  The  horrible  image  of  what  I  made 
myself  throws  on  the  dying  soul  a  dark  ‘  ‘  shadow  ’  ’  and  a 
chill  intolerable  as  of  the  everlasting  death,  while  behind 
the  thin  “  screen”  which  separates  the  ending  present  from 
the  endless  future,  appear  dim  visions  of  that  last  doom, 
still  “unuttered,”  but  “intolerable.” 

If  the  true-hearted  husband  and  father  would,  therefore, 
not  be  haunted  and  maddened  in  the  last  dreadful  extrem¬ 
ity  by  the  apparition  of  his  lost  “Life  and  Love”  rising 
up  before  him,  to  show  him  what  both  life  and  love  in  the 
home  might  have  been,  let  him  begin  now  in  earnest  to 
make  that  home  his  true  and  sole  paradise. 

Seeking  Pleasure  outside  the  Home. 

There  is  another  class  of  husbands  who  are  the  enemies 
of  their  own  domestic  happiness, — such  as  seem  to  think 
that  home  can  atford  them  neither  congenial  society,  nor 
rational  amusement. 

Of  course,  we  are  perfectly  aware,  that  many  men  of 
every  rank  in  the  community  are  driven  to  the  tavern,  the 
low  theater,  or  the  club-house,  by  deplorable  selfishness  or 
apathy  of  a  wife  or  a  mother,  who  will  not  or  cannot  make 
home  attractive  to  the  husband  or  the  son.  Elsewhere  we 
have  shown  how  the  husband  has  to  exert  himself,  as  in  the 
performance  of  a  most  sacred  duty,  to  contribute  his  share, 
and  if  need  be,  the  principal  share,  in  all  that  makes  the 
domestic  hearth  warm,  bright,  joyous,  and  delightful.  Let 
the  heart  of  a  true  man  only  be  set  on  making  of  his  own 
home  the  most  attractive  and  soul-satisfying  spot  on  earth, 
and  he  cannot  fail  of  success.  This  is  one  of  the  funda¬ 
mental  and  indispensable  duties  of  a  father  and  husband’s 


CAUSES  LEADING  MEN  TO  SEEK  SUCH  PLEASURES.  127 

office,  and  God  is  bound  to  assist  him  in  his  earnest  en¬ 
deavor,  nay,  God  and  his  angels  are  interested  in  pro¬ 
moting  his  purpose. 

We  suppose,  however,  in  what  we  have  to  say  here,  that 
the  fault  is  not  on  the  side  of  the  wife,  the  mother,  or  the 
daughters  :  that  they  are  most  anxious  to  keep  the  gentle¬ 
men  of  the  family  at  home,  most  desirous  to  devote  them¬ 
selves  to  their  comfort  and  amusement,  and  every  way 
capable  of  rendering  the  evening  hours  and  the  Sabbath  re¬ 
pose  most  pleasant  and  profitable. 

It  not  unfrequently  happens,  in  a  country  such  as  the 
United  States,  where  steady  and  persevering  industry  is 
pretty  sure  to  enable  the  laborer  to  rise  to  wealth  and  posi¬ 
tion,  that  a  real  difficulty  is  thus  created  for  the  husband. 
He  has  risen,  and  has  given  his  family  a  luxurious  home. 
But  his  wife  and,  sometimes,  his  daughters  as  well,  have 
not  risen  with  him.  He  is  ambitious  to  mix  with  the  culti¬ 
vated  society  among  which  his  fortune  enables  him  to  move. 
But  he  cannot  invite  to  his  home  men  who  are  his  equals  in 
wealth,  and  his  superiors  in  birth  and  in  long-acquired 
social  standing  ;  nor, — were  his  daughters  sufficiently  edu¬ 
cated  to  make  up  for  their  mother’s  deficiency,  would  such 
gentlemen, — save  only  for  some  passing  political  purpose, 
— be  willing  to  accept  his  invitation,  or  to  admit  him  and 
his  to  their  home  circles.  Meanwhile  there  is  in  the  bosom 
of  men  of  this  class  a  yearning  for  “  better  society,”  which 
impels  them  to  turn  their  back  on  their  own  fireside  and 
seek  so  much  of  this  society  as  they  can  find  on  the  neutral 
ground  of  certain  clubs  and  associations.  Hence  the  danger 
of  utterly  neglecting  what  is  due  to  one’ s  own  home,  and 
of  seeking  and  never  finding  the  happiness  inseparably 
attached,  for  the  husband  and  father,  to  the  company  of 
his  wife  and  children.  Hence,  too,  the  many  temptations 
thrown  in  the  way  of  men,  who  have  plenty  of  money, 
without  the  sweet  attractions  of  home-enjoyment  to  hold 
them  from  pursuing  a  downward  course  of  distraction  and 
dissipation. 

We  have  seen  this  evil, — so  frequently  to  be  met  with  in 


128 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


a  society  like  our  own, — remedied  only  by  such  wisdom 
and  piety  as  we  mentioned  in  a  preceding  chapter.* 

Similar,  and  more  touching  instances  of  devotion  to  the 
dear  ones  who,  having  shared  the  early  battle  with  poverty, 
have  a  right  to  share  in  all  the  home-bliss  that  affluence  can 
bring, — are  to  be  found  all  around  us.  For  if  there  are 
many  (shall  we  say  too  many  V)  who  are  all  too  anxious  to 
assert  themselves  and  make  the  most  of  their  newly  ac¬ 
quired  wealth, — there  are  also  very  many,  whom  their 
natural  good  sense  induces  to  be  satisfied  with  the  solid  and 
substantial  comforts  of  a  modest  home,  of  a  sound  educa¬ 
tion  for  their  children,  of  devotion  to  the  friends  who  have 
stood  by  them  in  the  dark  hours,  and  of  the  blissful  satis¬ 
faction  of  being  for  the  poor  and  the  suffering  within  their 
reach  God’s  watchful  eye  and  helpful  hand.  There  is  not 
a  priest  on  our  wide  missionary  field  all  over  the  North 
American  continent,  who  does  not  know  many  such  homes 
as  we  are  here  describing  in  a  few  faint  outlines.  One,  in 
particular,  we  shall  sketch  briefly,  throwing  over  the  pic¬ 
ture  such  a  veil  as  may  cover  the  sensitive,  shrinking  mod¬ 
esty  of  the  model  husband  and  wife. 

The  Man  who  Drank  of  the  Waters  of  his  oion  Well. 

He  had  been  forced  to  seek  a  refuge  in  America,  by  po¬ 
litical  troubles  in  his  native  land,  in  which  his  family  had 
been  seriously  implicated, — though  he  had  himself  taken 
no  active  part.  Still  the  indiscriminating  passion,  which 
usurped  the  place  of  public  justice,  having  marked  him  also 
out  for  punishment,  left  him  no  alternative  but  flight  and 
exile.  Landing  at  New  Orleans,  he  met  with  alternate 
success  and  ill  fortune,  and  at  length  his  failing  health  as 
well  as  the  desire  of  joining  his  wife  and  children  lately  ar¬ 
rived  in  New  York,  led  him  to  go  North.  He  arrived  in 
the  great  city  almost  as  penniless  as  when  he  first  landed  in 
New  Orleans.  But  his  steady  temperate  habits,  his  trust 


*  See  pages  47-52,  and  Chapter  IV.  throughout. 


DRINK  THE  WATERS  OF  THINE  OWN  WELL.  129 


in  God,  his  quiet,  persevering  industry,  and  the  indomita¬ 
ble  will  to  succeed,  raised  him,  step  by  step,  to  the  front 
rank  of  business  men.  All  this  while,  he  with  his  wife  and 
three  children  lived  most  modestly,  giving  without  stint  the 
money  he  earned  to  every  need,  and  remaining  almost  un¬ 
known  to  the  very  clergymen  who  were  the  recipients  or 
the  distributers  of  his  most  liberal  charities. 

The  village  near  which  he  had  located  the  factory  to 
which  he  owed  his  great  fortune,  did  not  contain  a  single 
person  professing  his  faith  or  belonging  to  his  own  nation¬ 
ality  ;  yet  he  was  not  the  less  respected  by  the  very  highest 
in  the  place,  and  none  the  less  popular  among  the  laborers 
whom  he  employed.  His  word  was  his  bond  in  commercial 
circles,  his  gentle  firmness  gave  him  authority  over  his 
workmen,  and  his  intelligent  liberality  in  encouraging  the 
best  talent,  together  with  his  generous  care  of  the  sick  and 
suffering,  won  him  the  hearts  of  all.  So,  the  silent,  mild- 
mannered,  simply  dressed  man  moved  about  in  his  own 
little  world  of  labor,  the  personification  of  true  authority, 
creating  happiness  and  love  by  continual  beneficence. 

To  the  priest  of  the  distant  city  to  whom  he  periodically 
went  to  confession,  he  never  made  his  name  known  during 
the  first  period  of  his  prosperity,  although  he  invariably 
left  with  him  large  alms  for  his  poor,  or  liberal  donations 
for  his  parochial  institutions. 

He  had  labored  seriously  and  successfully  to  educate 
himself  during  all  these  years,  teaching  himself  all  the 
branches  necessary  and  useful  to  him  in  his  calling  ;  but  his 
quick  intelligence,  his  wide  experience  of  men,  and  his 
sound  practical  judgment  enabled  him  to  go  far  beyond  the 
mere  letter  of  what  he  learned.  While  giving  his  children 
(two  girls  and  a  boy)  a  solid  common-school  and  business 
education,  he  was  careful  to  make  his  wife, — his  own  twin- 
soul  in  disposition  and  ability, — study  with  him  during 
his  after-business  hours.  Hot  even  his  own  children  were 
allowed  to  suspect  the  occupation  of  their  dear  parents  dur¬ 
ing  the  long  night-hours  devoted  year  after  year  to  self-im¬ 
provement.  Hor,  when  grown  up  to  manhood  and  woman- 
9 


130 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


hood,  they  found  both  father  and  mother  able  to  converse 
with  the  most  intelligent  and  accomplished,  giving  as  well 
as  receiving  information  on  the  topics  introduced,  did  they 
for  a  moment  imagine  that  there  had  been  in  the  early 
training  of  both  a  defect  which  nothing  but  the  most  per¬ 
sistent  labor  in  after-life  enabled  them  to  remedy.  The 
husband’s  first  effort  in  that  direction  had  been  to  speak 
and  write  the  English  language  in  its  purity,  without  much 
caring  to  correct  his  native  accent.  And  this  he  also  made 
the  first  object  of  his  wife’s  private  studies.  We  have  read 
letters  from  both,  not  only  free  from  grammatical  errors  of 
any  kind,  but  perfect  models  of  simplicity,  sound  sense, 
and  good  taste.  And,  for  hours  together,  we  have  conversed 
with  them  without  being  able  to  remark  a  single  flaw  in 
their  conversation.  And  all  this  was  the  result  of  private 
study,  after  the  first  period  of  youth  had  been  passed,  and 
when  both  were  engrossed  with  the  management  of  a  large 
and  growing  business,  and  the  cares  of  a  family  ! 

What  was  most  admirable,  however,  was  their  quiet  and 
comfortable  home,  in  which  furniture  and  servants  seemed 
to  reflect  the  quiet,  gentle,  modest  character  of  the  master 
and  mistress,  and  in  which  the  children  were  evidently  the 
natural  growth  of  the  parental  tree, — the  daughters  bright, 
intelligent,  handsome,  healthy,  and  radiant  like  their  mo¬ 
ther, — and  the  son  what  one  would  think  his  father  must 
have  been  at  the  same  age, — self-possessed,  courteous  with¬ 
out  affectation,  cordial  in  word  and  manner,  low-voiced  in 
conversation,  and  warming  gradually  into  real  eloquence  on 
subjects  that  interested  his  convictions. 

It  was  evident,  even  to  the  casual  visitor,  that  the  mem- 
bers  of  this  family  were  all  in  all  to  each  other.  The  father 
never  would  accept  invitations  from  the  most  distinguished 
men  in  the  community,  who  entertained  a  deep  respect  for 
the  man’s  upright  character  and  uncommon  sagacity,  and 
were  anxious  to  cultivate  a  more  intimate  acquaintance 
with  a  household,  a  glimpse  of  whose  interior  resembled  a 
view  from  the  dusty  and  sun-broiled  thoroughfare  of  a 
green,  shady  resting-place  beneath  the  high  trees,  where 


DRINK  OUT  OF  TOUT  OWN  WELL. 


131 


wild  flowers  scent  the  cool  air  and  the  song  of  birds  make 
the  stillness  vocal. 

No  one  who  had  ever  enjoyed  the  hospitality  of  that 
abode  of  unaffected  simplicity  and  true  self-respect,  but 
wished  to  return  again.  None  of  that  family  ever  spent  a 
single  day  or  night  away  from  that  true  home  in  which 
their  whole  heart  dwelt,  but  longed  to  be  back  again  in  its 
atmosphere  of  love  and  peace  and  sunshine. 

We  hold  up  a  mirror  to  many  a  true-hearted  man,  to 
husbands  and  fathers  dazzled  by  the  glare  of  a  false  and 
dangerous  respectability,  misled  by  a  wrong  estimate  of 
the  real  nature  of  home-life  and  domestic  happiness.  We 
pray  that  theirs  may  be  the  unspeakable  enjoyment  which 
crowned  the  life  of  a  husband,  who  felt  that  he  had  in  him¬ 
self  and  the  virtues  of  his  loved  companion  too  rich  a  store 
of  goodness,  greatness,  and  self-content,  to  seek  outside  of 
his  own  home-life  for  any  one  satisfaction  necessary  to  him¬ 
self  and  his  dear  ones. 

Men  who  seelc  the  Bitter  Waters  of  the  Desert. 

From  this  home, — like  the  skylark’s  lowly  nest  hidden 
far  away  from  the  roadside,  amid  the  hay  and  fragrant 
clover,  or  like  that  of  the  nightingale  buried  in  the  soft 
mosses  and  undergrowth  of  the  deep  forest, — we  turn  to 
the  desolate  home  of  the  man  of  fashion  or  dissipation, 
resembling  the  heaps  of  sand  on  some  river-bank,  in  which 
the  Australian  bird*  deposits  her  eggs,  leaving  them  to 
be  hatched  by  the  burning  tropical  sun,  while  the  young 
brood  are  deprived  of  a  mother’s  tender  and  watchful  care 
or  of  a  father’s  protection. 

When, — as  we  have  shown  in  the  last  example, — it  is 
within  a  husband’s  power  to  create  himself  a  paradise,  in 
which  body  and  soul  may  find  repose,  refreshment,  and  all 
true  contentment  after  labor  and  at  the  end  of  life,  what 
folly  and  what  guilt  are  not  the  man’s  who  throws  his 


*  The  Tallegalla,  or  Australian  Brush-Turkey. 


132 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


money,  his  time,  his  health,  and  his  heart  away  on  outside 
pursuits, — like  waters  poured  out  on  the  barren  desert 
where  tree  or  shrub  or  flower  will  never  grow  ! 

For, — after  all, — wealth  inherited  or  acquired,  a  social 
position  obtained  from  one’s  family  or  conquered  by  one’s 
own  merit,  talents,  time,  health,  and  opportunity, — every¬ 
thing  which  enables  a  man  to  be  conspicuous,  influential, 
to  be  a  living  power  for  the  common  weal  or  the  good  of  his 
own  dear  ones, — is  heaven-given,  and  may  be  wasted  like 
water  poured  out  on  the  barren  sands.  You  have  wealth,  a 
home  that  may  be  honored,  a  family  that  may  be  happy, 
health  and  strength  and  fruitful  years  before  you ; — will 
you  be  the  steady  light  of  that  home  ?  the  very  heart  of  that 
family’s  happiness  ?  Will  you  make  what  remains  of  life, 
like  the  crown  of  the  palm  tree  when  loaded  down  with 
its  ripe,  delicious  fruit  ?  Then  seek  within  your  home,  in 
the  company  of  your  wife  and  children,  the  sole  satisfaction 
which  can  secure  your  own  felicity  and  contribute  to  theirs. 

Look  around  you,  and  see,  in  this  great  city,  in  every 
city  throughout  the  land,  in  the  great  centers  of  population, 
wealth,  and  industry  that  you  are  acquainted  with  from 
personal  observation  or  the  reliable  report  of  others, — how 
many  families  are  made  wretched  or  utterally  ruined,  how 
many  lives  are  degraded,  how  many  hearts  broken,  how 
many  reputations  are  blasted,  and  how  many  honorable 
careers  are  brought  to  the  most  shameful  ending, — by  the 
fascinations  of  the  club-room  or  the  gambling-house  ! 

We  have  known,  through  their  results, — just  as  one  learns 
to  judge  the  pitiless  might  of  the  angry  ocean  from  the 
wrecks  and  the  corpses  cast  up  on  the  beach, — the  terrible 
consequences  of  club-life  in  Paris  and  London,  as  well  as  in 
Yew  York.  We  know  that  the  tide  of  custom  which  carries 
men  away  from  the  quiet  and  duties  of  home-life  to  the 
club-room  and  the  gambling- table,  is  daily  gaining  volume 
and  velocity.  Can  no  warning  voice  be  raised  ?  Modern 
science  has  invented  a  most  admirable  system  of  storm- 
signals,  warning  vessels  setting  out  to  sea  of  the  danger 
which  threatens  them  on  the  waves,  and  these  signals  are 


CLUB-LIFE  VERSUS  HOME-LIFE . 


133 


only  the  result  of  a  still  more  admirable  system  of  weather 
observations. 

Can  the  sacred  science  of  the  theologian  and  moralist,  or 
the  zeal  of  a  priestly  heart,  not  invent  and  apply  some  such 
warnings  to  the  souls  that  are  still  on  the  firm  ground  of 
domestic  duty  faithfully  discharged,  but  who  are  sadly 
tempted  to  try  the  ventures  and  enjoy  the  excitement  of 
these  currents  of  social  life  so  full  of  shipwreck  and  sorrow? 

The  wrecks  themselves  and  the  sight  of  their  victims 
may  serve  to  warn  the  unwary,  the  venturesome,  or  the 
tempted. 


A  Young  Mechanic ’  s  Fearf  ul  Example. 

Here  is  a  young  artisan  who  has  been  all  his  life  a  model 
of  filial  devotion  to  his  parents,  absolutely  irreproachable 
in  his  morals,  most  esteemed  as  a  tradesman,  and  hand¬ 
somely  remunerated  for  his  labor,  at  the  moment  his  parents 
induce  him  to  marry  a  girl  of  his  own  class,  in  every  way 
suited  to  him  by  her  education,  practical  tastes,  unsullied 
innocence,  and  true  piety.  The  marriage  and  the  very 
comfortable  establishment  made  for  the  young  people,  are 
the  joint  work  of  their  two  excellent  families,  as  much  as 
their  union  is  the  result  of  real  mutual  affection. 

All  the  relations  and  friends  who  have  seen  them  in  their 
new  home  have  pronounced  them  most  happy,  and  their 
handsome  little  dwelling  a  picture  of  comfort.  A  few 
months  of  unalloyed  bliss  have  passed  over  them,  disclos¬ 
ing  to  each  the  solid  and  lovable  qualities  of  the  other, 
and  thus  drawing  closer  the  sacred  bond  between  them. 
Till  that  hour  the  young  husband,  though  possessing  many 
warm  friends  and  admiring  acquaintances,  has  never  be¬ 
longed  to  any  club  or  association, — never,  indeed,  been  in¬ 
side  a  club-house.  Not  so  his  companions  in  the  workshop. 
The  foremost  among  them  and  one  of  the  junior  partners  of 
the  firm,  belong  to  a  very  influential  club  of  tradesmen,  un¬ 
married  men  for  the  most  part, — on  whose  roll  of  member¬ 
ship  are  the  names  of  very  many  distinguished  mechanics 


134 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


in  the  city.  Our  young  husband  is  made  to  believe,  now 
that  his  independent  position  as  a  married  man  opens 
to  him  new  prospects  of  fortune  and  advancement, — that, 
in  their  business,  a  man  cannot  hope  to  reach  any  high  de  - 
gree  of  eminence,  unless  he  belongs  to  a  club  like  theirs. 
This  is  the  chief  reason  which  prevails  on  the  inexperienced 
youth  to  join  them. 

He  does  so  reluctantly  and  with  many  strong  misgivings. 
But  he  does  so  because  the  support  he  is  promised  from  his 
fellow- members,  will,  he  thinks,  enable  him  to  reach  that 
point  of  success  and  prosperity,  which  will  contribute  so 
materially  to  his  wife’ s  happiness.  From  her,  however,  he 
keeps  his  membership  a  secret.  The  single  evening  spent 
at  the  club,  has  been  that  on  which  he  was  elected  and  re¬ 
ceived  the  warm  congratulations  of  his  associates.  So,  he 
hopes, — indeed,  he  is  sure, — that  his  duties  toward  them 
will  not  take  him  away  from  the  company  of  his  young 
wife,  or  interfere  with  his  domestic  duties. 

The  First  Cup. 

To  be  sure, — once  the  election  was  over,  and  the  new 
member  had  made  his  neat  little  speech,  and  shaken  hands 
with  all  present, — refreshments  were  partaken  of  in  the  ad¬ 
joining  restaurant,  and  he  had  to  drink  a  health  or  two. 
This  was  an  innovation  in  his  hitherto  orderly  and  strictly 
abstemious  life.  For  he  was  the  son  of  a  man  who  had 
gained  in  youth  a  great  and  rare  victory  over  habitual  in¬ 
temperance,  and  who  had  been  most  careful  to  preserve  his 
children  from  the  curse  which  had  blighted  his  OAvn  most 
precious  years.  It  so  happened,  too,  that  his  reception  into 
the  club  took  place  a  few  days  only  before  the  Fourth  of 
July,  and  he  was  invited  to  make  one  of  the  addresses  cus¬ 
tomary  on  the  occasion.  Then  he  was  charged  with  pro¬ 
posing  a  toast  at  a  puplic  banquet  to  take  place  in  the 
evening  under  the  auspices  of  the  club. 

All  this  tilled  his  young  wife  with  secret  forebodings  of 
evil.  His  life-long  habits  of  sobriety  had  been  one  of  her 


THE  MANLINESS  OF  BREAKING  A  WIFE  S  HEART.  135 

husband-  s  chief  recommendations  to  her  parents,  one  of  the 
solid  reasons  on  which  her  own  esteem  for  him  was  founded. 
She  noticed  his  excited  and  strange  manner  on  his  return 
home  the  night  of  his  election,  but  forebore  from  either 
question,  remark,  or  reproach.  On  the  Fourth  of  July  he 
came  in  very  late  after  the  banquet,  and  came  in  intoxi¬ 
cated,  noisy,  and  violent !  She  had  spent  the  day  in  agony  ; 
she  feared  she  knew  not  what,  as  the  birds  and  brute  beasts 
feel  instinctively  the  approach  of  an  earthquake,  as  sea¬ 
birds  divine  the  coming  of  a  tidal  wave  and  liy  promptly  to 
the  shore  and  the  highlands. 

So  did  the  gentle  and  pious  girl  take  refuge  from  her 
own  unexplained  fears  in  prayer,  lifting  up  her  heart  to 
God  in  the  highest.  Indeed,  she  was  still  on  her  knees, 
when  the  hurried  ringing  of  the  door-bell  startled  her, 
making  her  heart  beat  violently.  She  could  not  stir  from 
the  spot  on  which  she  had  been  kneeling,  endeavoring  to 
overcome  the  faintness  and  the  sudden  heartache  she  felt, 
as  they  bore  in  her  husband,  swearing,  struggling  with  his 
companions,  and  uttering  threats  of  vengeance  against  some 
real  or  imaginary  foe.  His  rage  increased  on  seeing  his 
young  wife  pale,  silent,  riveted  to  the  spot  on  which  she 
stood,  and  staring  at  the  scene  before  her  with  frightened 
and  fixed  eyes.  She  soon  recovered  herself,  thanking  in  a 
few  words  the  two  worthies  who  were  only  a  little  less 
intoxicated  than  her  husband.  After  much  exertion  she 
succeeded  in  pacifying  him,  and  inducing  him  to  undress 
and  take  the  rest  he  needed. 

The  next  morning  found  him  sick  in  heart  and  head. 
Hot  one  word  of  reproach  was  uttered  by  the  little  wife ; 
nor  did  she  so  much  as  allude  to  the  scene  of  the  preceding 
night.  This  ought  to  have  touched  the  husband  more  than 
anything  else.  But  in  truth  his  brain  had  not  yet  recovered 
from  the  effects  of  the  last  day’s  excitement  and  of  the 
deep  debauch  with  which  it  had  closed.  So,  although  he 
vowed  interiorly  that  he  should  never  again  be  seen  in  such 
a  state,  he  did  not  express  to  his  wife  by  word  or  look  the 
sorrow  he  really  felt.  On  the  contrary,  he  put  a  bold  face 


136 


TRUE  MEW  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


on  it,  saying  that  “men  were  men;  that  he  had  to  do 
a  man’s  part  in  public  and  on  great  occasions;  that  his 
speeches  had  been  well  received,  that  many  had  highly 
complimented  him,  and  that  he  had  to  comply  with  the 
custom  of  gentlemen  on  such  public  occasions,  to  drink 
toasts  to  his  friends  and  admirers;”  .  .  .  and  much  more 
to  the  same  purpose. 

To  all  this  the  wife  made  no  reply,  save  by  the  tears 
which  fell  silently  down  her  cheeks.  The  husband  observed 
them  with  a  keen  pang  of  anguish  ;  but,  with  that  perver¬ 
sity  of  judgment  and  feeling  which  many  men,  “  honorable  ” 
and  educated  and  high-born  men, — mistake  or  feign  to  mis¬ 
take  for  manliness  and  independence, — the  culprit  only 
blustered  and  bungled  the  more  as  he  went  on  justifying 
his  own  moral  cowardice.  He  was  yet  speaking  when  one 
of  his  associate  workmen  came  in  according  to  appointment, 
and  both  sallied  out  together,  leaving  the  young  wife  to  her 
grief  and  her  sad  forebodings. 

They  sallied  out,  breakfasted  together  at  a  neighboring 
restaurant,  seasoning  their  breakfast  with  some  needed 
stimulant,  and  then  went  to  the  factory. 

Fast  in  the  Folds  of  the  Serpent. 

Shall  we  continue  the  details  of  this  sad  story  ?  Here 
was  a  young  man  about  to  contract  one  of  these  dreadful 
habits  which  bind  the  soul  with  chains  as  firm  as  those 
which  hold  down  the  inhabitants  of  the  City  of  the  Eternal 
Death.  A  friendly  hand  might  have  led  him  away  from 
the  fatal  downward  path,  which  to  him  was  a  path  almost 
untrodden,  and  certainly  unloved.  His  wife,  young  as  she 
was,  could  and  should,  with  that  deep,  clear-sighted  wis¬ 
dom  that  is  one  of  the  gifts  of  woman,  have  been  this  friend, 
had  he  turned  to  her.  But  the  Tempter  was  at  hand  in  the 
fellow- workman  who  had  called  for  him,  and  who  had  re¬ 
marked  the  young  wife’s  tears  that  morning,  and  hastened, 
when  they  were  alone  in  the  street,  to  twit  his  companion  on 
his  being  “  hen-pecked,”  and  tied  to  his  wife’s  apron-strings. 


DRAGGED  DOWN  TO  PERDITION 


137 


A  well- seasoned  tippler  himself,  and  a  man  who  had  al¬ 
ready  broken  one  wife’s  heart,  he  related  to  more  than  one 
in  the  workshop  that  his  young  friend  had  been  severely 
lectured  by  his  bride  for  returning  home  jolly  on  the  Fourth 
of  July.  So,  after  laboring  hours,  the  young  husband, — 
who  had  now  sobered  down  and  had  been  making  very  seri¬ 
ous  resolutions  of  amendment,  was  surrounded  by  a  group 
of  inveterate  drinkers,  who  bantered  him  mercilessly  about 
his  meek  subjection  to  his  wife. 

From  that  hour  he  fell,  like  a  forsaken  ship,  into  the 
hands  and  under  the  direction  of  these  unprincipled  men. 
Vainly  did  he  stuggle  to  escape  from  the  thraldom  they 
exercised.  Week  after  week  he  followed  them  to  the  club 
and  the  tavern,  at  first  only  “to  assert  his  manhood  and 
his  independence,”  as  was  the  slang  of  his  fellows;  and 
soon,  to  gratify  the  craving  for  alcoholic  excitement,  which 
had  now  become  his  ruling  passion. 

Dragged  down  to  Perdition. 

To  his  poor  young  wife  he  manifested,  alternately,  the 
most  touching  sentiments  of  tenderness  and  repentance,  or 
those  of  downright  brutality, — of  brutality  when  crazed  by 
drink, — of  repentance  and  love,  when  thoroughly  awakened 
from  the  temporary  insanity  produced  by  alcohol.  She 
never  permitted  herself  one  word  of  reproach.  When  her 
husband  returned  to  her  weekly,  body  and  soul  deformed 
by  the  evil  spirit  that  entered  into  him  with  alcohol,  she 
only  sought  to  soothe  him  and  hide  him  away  from  every 
eye.  God  alone  saw  the  tears  she  shed  unceasingly,  as  she 
besought  Him  to  accept  her  life  as  a  sacrifice  of  atonement 
for  her  husband’s  guilt,  and  to  grant  in  return  the  grace 
of  final  repentance  to  her  lost  one. 

The  heart-rending  agony  of  grief  and  shame  which  the 
poor  wretch  underwent  in  the  intervals  between  his  re¬ 
lapses,  was  something  most  pitiful  to  behold.  The  good 
priest  who  had  married  them  also  added  his  fatherly  advice 
to  the  promptings  of  remorse ;  and  there  followed  a  few 


138 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


spasmodic  efforts  of  amendment.  But  the  examples,  the 
jests  and  sneers  of  his  bottle-companions,  were  too  powerful 
for  a  will  naturally  infirm,  and  growing  weaker  by  every 
new  resolution  violated,  and  every  additional  sin  of  intoxi¬ 
cation. 

And  thus  the  young  inebriate  continued  his  downward 
course  with  accelerated  speed, — till  he  lost  his  position  of 
foreman  in  the  workshop,  lost  at  length  all  opportunity  for 
work,  which  his  health  and  habits  rendered  him  unfit  to 
perform,  and  lost  to  his  creditors  of  the  tavern  the  very 
roof  above  him,  the  handsome  and  comfortable  home  be¬ 
stowed  on  him  by  his  good  father. 

Ruin,  Death ,  Insanity. 

The  latter  took  the  young  and  heart-broken  wife  to  his 
own  home,  lavishing  on  her  the  warmest  and  most  tender 
care.  She  survived  only  by  a  few  hours  the  birth  of  her 
first  babe,  and  the  babe  itself  had  no  sooner  been  regene¬ 
rated  by  baptism,  than  its  spirit  rejoined  its  mother  on 
high.  They  laid  them  both  to  rest  together,  the  little  blos¬ 
som  on  the  parent  stem  ;  while  the  husband  and  father 
sought  a  refuge  against  his  grief  and  despair  in  furious  and 
continual  intoxication, — till  at  length  reason  gave  way  for¬ 
ever,  and  his  parents  had  to  place  the  madman  in  an  insane 
asylum. 

The  Scandal  Spreads  from  Above  Downward. 

This  young  mechanic  was  only  one  of  the  tens  of  thou¬ 
sands  who  in  any  one  of  our  States,  daily  travel  down  the 
road  to  ruin,  following  in  the  footsteps  of  their  betters. 
The  Mechanics’  Club  and  the  connected  tavern  are  only  a 
copy  of  so  many  aristocratic  resorts  of  the  same  nature, 
with  their  restaurants,  their  unlimited  facilities  for  gam¬ 
bling  and  dissipation,  and  their  hordes  of  wealthy  and  fash¬ 
ionable  husbands  and  fathers,  who  learn  there  to  forget  and 
violate  all  their  most  sacred  home-duties, — wasting  the  often 


SUCH  SCANDALS  SPREAD  FROM  ABOVE  DOWNWARD.  139 

hard-won  wealth  and  the  golden  opportunities  of  mature 
life,  in  ruining  soul  and  body,  and  bringing  as  well,  ruin 
and  desolation  to  the  home  they  were  made  to  gladden  and 
glorify. 

How  many  well-born  men,  who  were  on  their  way  to 
honors  higher  than  birth  or  gold  can  ever  purchase  in  a  free 
country,  and  who  are  at  this  moment  the  inmates  of  the 
public  prison  or  of  the  insane  asylum,  because  they  pre¬ 
ferred  to  the  charities,  the  duties,  the  repose  and  delight  of 
home-life,  the  glitter,  the  excitement,  the  manifold  fasci¬ 
nations  of  club-life,  and  betrayed  their  conscience,  their 
honor,  and  their  trust  to  gratify  the  habits  of  criminal  ex¬ 
travagance  and  dissipation  contracted  there  ! 

How  many  men  once  most  happy  and  most  honored, — 
favored  public  officers,  successful  merchants  or  manufac¬ 
turers,  lawyers  and  physicians  trusted  with  the  honor  and 
health  of  families, — men  blessed  with  accomplished  and  de¬ 
voted  wives,  with  doating  and  most  virtuous  children,  who 
have  allowed  themselves  to  be  fascinated  by  the  sounds  and 
sights  and  amusements  of  the  club-house,  and  of  what  the 
club-house  leads  to, — and  are  now  gone  before  their  time 
to  a  dishonored  grave,  after  bequeathing  to  wife  and  chil¬ 
dren  a  name  which  all  the  waters  of  the  Hudson  could  not 
wash  clean  !  And  how  many  others  are  left,  after  making 
a  wreck  of  fortune,  reputation  and  home,  to  drag  on  a 
wretched  existence,  unhonored,  and  unloved,  despised  alike 
by  their  fellow-citizens  and  themselves ! 

To  be  sure,  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  rich  man  to  neglect 
his  wife  and  family,  and  to  make  his  home  of  the  tavern, 
without  bringing  poverty  on  those  who  call  him  husband 
and  father,  or  without  having  his  offenses  laid  bare  to  the 
public  eye  or  visited  by  the  reproof  of  the  magistrate  or  so 
much  as  a  notice  from  the  officers  of  the  law.  W e  happen 
to  hear  of  many  of  these  so-called  “Cottages,”  or  pet  tav¬ 
erns,  patronized  exclusively  by  the  wealthy,  where  the  re¬ 
creant  head  of  a  family,  because  he  happens  to  be  blessed  or 
cursed  with  a  superabundance  of  money, — can  hide  himself 
away  for  weeks  and  months,  every  one  of  his  vicious  appe- 


140 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


tites  pandered  to,  and  the  consequences  of  his  debauch 
most  carefully  screened  from  all  but  his  boon  companions. 

And  when  wealth  and  station,  when  culture  and  the  most 
responsible  professions  are  thus  made  to  teach  the  laboring 
classes  the  very  worst  lessons  of  example, — is  God  going  to 
perform  a  miracle  by  saving  society  from  the  destroying 
hands  and  corrupting  examples  of  the  governing  and  lead¬ 
ing  classes  ? 

How  the  Leading  Classes  must  Lead. 

The  leading  classes, — if  they  would  lead  at  all  to  any 
purpose  under  a  republican  form  of  government, — must 
lead  by  the  ascendency  of  virtuous  example.  It  is  agreed 
on  all  hands  by  the  men  most  competent  to  forecast  our 
future  weal  or  woe  from  a  scientific  survey  of  the  present, 
that  on  the  purity  of  home-life  in  every  class  of  the  com¬ 
munity,  depends  the  longevity  of  the  nation  as  well  as  its 
prosperity.  Leading  classes  there  are,  of  course,  among  us, 
as  elsewhere, — and  the  home  of  the  mechanic  and  the  laborer 
will  be  evermore  modeled  on  that  of  the  man  above  him  in 
wealth,  office,  station,  or  profession.  The  life  of  the  clergy¬ 
man,  the  lawyer,  the  physician,  the  magistrate,  the  mer¬ 
chant,  or  the  manufacturer,  will  be  instinctively  studied  by 
all  who  look  up  to  them  for  teaching  and  guidance,  for  direc¬ 
tion,  support,  and  employment.  Your  servants,  your  daily 
laborers,  all  who  depend  on  you  or  come  in  any  way  within 
the  reach  of  your  influence  and  example, — will  copy  you  so 
far  as  they  can  in  their  way  of  living,  their  amusements 
and  recreations. 

Hence  it  behooves  every  home  among  the  governing  and 
leading  classes, — that  the  example  it  sets,  like  the  radiance 
of  a  light-house  near  a  dangerous  coast, — should  be  steady 
and  guide  surely  amid  darkness  and  storm. 

We  have  seen  the  baneful  influences  of  the  club-house 
and  the  aristocratic  tavern  copied  by  the  naturally  am¬ 
bitious  classes  of  mechanics  and  skilled  laborers.  We  see, 
— to  our  grief  and  dismay, — that  the  young  people  of  both 
sexes  belonging  to  the  poorest  of  the  working  classes,  are 


HOW  CORRUPTION  SPREADS  AMONG  OUR  YOUTH.  141 

zealously  copying  the  worst  forms  of  fashionable  amuse¬ 
ment,  in  their  cheap  theaters,  cheap  dances,  Saturday  night 
free  balls, — and  such  like. 

They  swarm  to  them  from  the  crowded  down-town  dis¬ 
tricts  like  flies  in  midsummer  to  a  putrid  carcass  or  a  heap 
of  fermenting  vegetable  matter  ;  and,  on  Sunday  mornings 
more  especially,  as  we  can  testify,  they  are  to  be  seen  issu¬ 
ing  in  noisy  swarms  from  these  hotbeds  of  corruption, 
intoxicated  with  alcohol,  sensual  excitement,  and  passion, 
crowding  the  street-cars, — young  girls  and  young  boys  ut¬ 
terly  forgetful  and  regardless  of  modesty,  decency,  and 
self-respect, — returning  to  their  homes  as  a  blight  and  a 
curse,  or  prowling  through  the  streets  ready  for  every  law¬ 
less  deed  of  violence  and  murder  ! 

No  preaching  can  avail  to  stop  the  festering  of  this  mighty 
mass  of  corruption, — no  doctoring  can  avail  to  stop  this 
gangrene  which  has  fixed  itself  on  the  young  of  both  sexes, 
the  twin-roots  of  the  society  of  the  future, — unless  the  men 
of  the  leading  classes,  by  the  shining  morality  of  their  own 
lives,  and  the  beautiful  teachings  of  homes  made  attractive 
and  blissful,  shall  encourage  and  enable  the  poor  man, — the 
laborers  from  whose  hearths  these  swarms  of  pleasure-seek¬ 
ers  issue, — to  make  their  homes  so  bright  and  delightful 
that  young  maidens  and  young  boys  shall  never  leave  them, 
— but  to  join  pure  hands  and  virgin  hearts  at  the  matri¬ 
monial  altar  before  building  up  blessed  homes  of  their  own. 

Oh  !  let  no  one,  who  knows  how  lightly  we  have,  in 
these  last  pages,  passed  over  an  evil  that  chaste  minds 
would  not  care  to  fathom,  blame  the  writer  for  saying  thus 
much  and  no  more.  Let  all,  on  the  contrary,  who  have  at 
heart  the  preservation  and  perfection  of  home-life  in  our 
midst,  bethink  them  only  of  contributing  each  his  best  en¬ 
deavor  toward  thus  making  our  homes,  in  every  class,  the 
nurseries  of  true  men  and  true  women, — innocent  before 
marriage,  chaste  and  stainless  after  marriage,  God-fearing, 
self-respecting,  and  self-denying. 

With  this  not  unnecessary  digression,  we  close  this  first 
part  of  the  present  subject-matter,  reserving  what  remains 
for  another  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


BAD  HUSBANDS  (CONTINUED). 

When  yon  will  have  passed  this  gate  (of  Fortune),  another  inclosed  space 
extends  beyond  it :  do  you  perceive  at  its  outskirts  these  magnificently  attired 
women? — Yes,  who  are  they? — Their  names  are  Intemperance,  Pleasure,  Ava¬ 
rice,  and  Flattery. — But  why  are  they  stationed  there  ? — They  are  watching  for 
all  those  who  have  received  any  gifts  from  Fortune. — And  what  do  they  do 
next  ? — When  these  favorites  of  fortune  approach,  these  women  dance  with 
joy,  embrace  these  men,  praise  and  flatter  them,  and  urge  them  to  stay  where 
they  now  are, — holding  out  to  them  the  promise  of  a  life  of  ease,  without  suf¬ 
fering  or  sorrow.  As  soon  as  any  one  of  these  men,  fascinated  by  the  witch¬ 
eries  of  these  women,  surrenders  himself  to  Pleasure,  the  life  he  leads  seems 
to  him  at  first  to  be  most  delightful ;  but  very  soon  these  delights  appear  to 
him  to  be  empty  delusions.  Indeed,  as  soon  as  he  awakes  from  his  intoxicating 
dream,  he  sees  that  while  he  was  enjoying  his  visionary  bliss,  both  his  goods 
and  his  person  have  been  utterly  wrasted.  Hence,  having  now  dissipated  all 
that  he  had  received  from  Fortune,  he  becomes  the  slave  of  these  female 
tyrants,  who  force  him  to  obey  them  in  all  things,  to  perpetrate  all  manner  of 
enormities  ; — such  as  to  become  a  forger,  a  profaner  of  holy  things,  a  perjurer, 
traitor,  highwayman, — an  embodiment,  in  one  word,  of  all  the  vices.  And 
when  he  lias  consummated  all  iniquity,  they  hand  him  over  to  Justice. — Ceees, 
Prospect  of  Human  Life. 

Cebes,  one  of  the  most  illustrious  of  the  disciples  of 
Socrates,  has  left  us  but  a  few  fragments  of  composition. 
Even  these,  however,  suffice  to  show,  as  do  the  writings  of 
Xenophon  and  Demosthenes,  the  influence  of  the  great 
Athenian’s  teaching  on  the  mind  and  heart  of  the  dis¬ 
ciple. 

In  the  “  Prospect  of  Human  Life  ”  *  he  uses  the  Oriental 
form  of  allegory  to  point  out,  as  in  a  vast  picture,  the  per- 

*  Generally  appended  to  the  editions  of  Epictetus. 
f  '  142 


WEAK  AMBITION. 


143 


nicious  influences  that  turn  the  multitude  of  men  aside 
from  the  path  of  virtue  and  true  wisdom,  render  them  the 
slaves  of  Error,  Passion,  and  Vice,  and  lead  them  to  endless 
pain.  Imposture  sits  with  Wise  Experience  at  the  very  gate 
of  Life  (the  author  describes  the  false  Philosophy  of  his  age 
and  country  together  with  the  errors  and  vices  which  tyran¬ 
nized  over  the  then  heathen  world).  Turning  aside  from 
the  latter,  which  warns  every  human  being  what  path  to 
take  in  order  to  find  the  great  teacher,  Truth,  and  to  arrive 
with  his  aid  at  lasting  felicity,  the  blind  and  blundering 
multitude  crowd  around  the  lofty  seat  of  Imposture,  drink 
of  her  poisoned  cup,  are  given  over  to  error  and  ignorance, 
to  vain  opinion,  and  vicious  enjoyment. 

We  are  now  concerned  with  such  of  the  crowd  as  blind 
Fortune  has  loaded  with  her  favors  ; — for  the  reality  which 
was  before  the  mental  and  bodily  vision  of  the  Athenian, 
Cebes,  differs  in  no  essential  point  from  that  which  meets 
the  eye  of  the  religious  philosopher  in  the  nineteenth  cen¬ 
tury  of  Christian  civilization. 

We  have  been  studying  a  few  types  of  the  bad  husband  ; 
a  few  more,  belonging  to  classes  neither  less  numerous,  nor 
less  interesting,  remain  to  be  considered  in  this  chapter. 
Cebes  makes  men  loaded  with  the  gifts  of  Fortune  come 
beneath  the  influence  of  “  Intemperance,  Pleasure,  Avarice, 
and  Flattery  we  shall  reverse  this  order,  leaving  the  in¬ 
temperate  husband  to  crown  the  sad  list  of  liome-destroyers, 
and  begin  with  such  as  may  be  classed  under  the  head  of 
“Flattery,”  or,  rather,  of  Vanity. 

Weak  Ambition. 

In  the  companion  book  to  the  present  work  *  we  spoke,  of 
the  love  of  display  as  one  of  the  most  dangerous  enemies 
of  the  wife  and  mistress  of  the  home, — of  vanity,  which 
nourishes  this  foolish  ambition,  as  the  path  to  dishonor. 

This  sort  of  weak  ambition, — of  vanity,  rather, — is  by  no 
means  uncommon  among  our  men,  not  alone  among  such  as 


*  “  The  Mirror  of  True  Womanhood,”  pp  123,  124,  125,  126. 


144 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


rise  to  affluence  and  position  without  possessing  anything 
like  mental  cultivation,  but  more  especially  among  the  edu¬ 
cated  who  have  risen  into  wealth  and  fame  by  dint  of  per¬ 
sonal  effort,  and  thanks  to  their  superior  culture. 

It  will  not  be  considered  as  an  invidious  distinction,  if  we 
here  say  that,  in  the  community  in  which  the  author  lives 
and  o  ver  which  his  observation  has  ranged  with  special  care, 
a  large  proportion  if  not  a  very  large  majority  of  such  hus¬ 
bands,  were  natives  of  the  New  England  States.  There,  the 
pride  taken  by  the  people  in  making  common-school  edu¬ 
cation  embrace  so  many  branches  elsewhere  reserved  for 
the  college,  the  university,  or  the  art  school,  has  begotten 
in  a  multitude  of  young  people  an  ambition  and  an  apti¬ 
tude  to  rise  to  eminence  as  professors  of  pure  science,  or  as 
civil  engineers  and  inventors.  Every  day  one  sees  some 
New-England  boy  thus  forcing  himself  by  talent  and  genius 
into  the  front  rank  of  industry  and  fortune.  It  is  to  their 
cases,  and  to  others  like  them,  that  our  animadversions 
more  particularly  apply. 

How  the  WeaMy  Ambitious  are  Ensnared. 

A  young  man  so  reared  and  highly  gifted  marries  while 
he  is  obscurely  struggling  to  rise.  His  wife  is  one  of  these 
pretty,  bright,  well-educated,  and  attractive  New-England 
girls  to  be  met  with  all  over  the  land,  in  town  and  country. 
She  is,  at  the  time  of  their  union,  quite  her  husband’ s  equal 
in  every  respect,  very  often  his  superior  in  birth  and  for¬ 
tune.  As  theirs  has  been  truly  a  love-match,  their  home- 
life  is  a  most  blissful  one  so  long  as  the  husband’s  battle 
for  distinction  and  success  lasts.  She  is,  during  these  years 
of  struggle,  and  often  of  poverty,  not  only  the  loving  wife, 
the  tender  mother,  and  thrifty  manager  of  the  home,  but 
also  and  especially  her  husband’s  companion,  counselor, 
friend,  and  consoler,  sustaining  him  when  discouraged  by 
failure  and  opposition,  and  cheering  him  on  to  face  and 
vanquish  every  obstacle,  till  at  length  he  triumphs. 

He  triumphs ;  fame  and  fortune  now  smile  upon  him, 


THE  OLD  LOVE  DESPLSED. 


145 


capitalists  place  unlimited  means  at  the  disposition  of  the 
successful  inventor,  or  court  association  with  one  whose 
practical  genius  has  outstripped  in  a  given  direction  the 
science  and  skill  of  the  most  popular  manufacturers  or 
speculators. 

With  success  comes  a  hew  ambition,  new  wants,  new 
habits,  new  aims  and  tendencies.  He  finds  himself  trans¬ 
ferred  from  his  obscure  native  town  and  his  modest  abode 
to  the  great  metropolis,  where  alone  that  rare  plant,  Genius, 
can  find  a  congenial  soil  and  atmosphere.  He  must  have 
either  splendid  apartments  at  the  most  fashionable  hotel  in 
which  to  receive  becomingly  the  men  of  wealth  and  position 
who  seek  his  alliance  or  his  acquaintance  ;  and,  next,  he 
must,  as  his  fortune  rises  still  higher,  have  a  brilliant  man¬ 
sion  of  his  own.  Besides,  the  fruit  of  his  genius,  he  is 
told,  must  not  be  confined  to  his  own  country ;  it  will  also 
thrive  in  foreign  lands  and  obtain  the  patronage  of  foreign 
governments  and  peoples. 

And  thus,  he  finds  himself,  step  by  step,  carried  upward 
by  the  wave  of  success  to  a  world  quite  different  from  that 
in  which  he  has  hitherto  moved.  And  with  himself,  his 
wife  and  children  have  been  suddenly  lifted  into  the  daz¬ 
zling  world  of  wealth,  fashion,  pleasure,  and  unbounded 
vanity. 

The  wife,  brought  up  in  the  simplicity  and  severity  of  a 
New-England  country  home,  does  not  take  kindly  to  very 
many  of  the  ways  of  this  fashionable  and  dazzling  world, 
with  whose  incense  her  husband  is  intoxicated.  She  is 
“too  puritanical”  in  the  estimation  of  her  husband’s  asso¬ 
ciates,  and  too  “  countrified  ”  in  the  judgment  of  their  ele¬ 
gant  wives.  Still,  these  condescend  to  patronize  her  and 
court  her  acquaintance  as  a  part  of  the  homage  due  to  her 
companion, — the  rising  man. 

Thus,  by  degrees  and  insensibly,  the  husband  is  led  to 
look  down  upon  his  wife,  to  consider  her  as  inferior  to  his 
new  position,  if  not  to  himself.  So  love  dies  out  in  the  in¬ 
tellect  before  it  is  killed  in  the  heart.  Should  it  so  happen 
that,  in  his  business  trips  abroad,  his  wife  should  accom- 
7 


146 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


pany  him,  the  result  most  probably  will  be  to  make  him 
contrast  unfavorably  her  quiet,  simple,  homely  tastes  with 
the  wit,  the  brilliancy,  the  grace  to  be  met  with  in  women 
of  the  upper  middle  class  in  European  capitals.  Nor  is  it 
unlikely  that  he  will  become  acquainted,  while  there,  with 
the  deplorable  laxity  of  opinion,  entertained  on  the  matri¬ 
monial  relations  by  the  V oltairian  husbands  of  these  women. 
And  so,  while  his  mind  is  poisoned  by  anti-christian  princi¬ 
ples  current  among  the  very  men  he  most  admires,  the  pure 
love  of  his  early  youth  and  later  manhood  is  daily  losing 
all  hold  on  his  heart. 

How  open  is  an  ambitious  or  a  vain  man  so  disposed,  to 
the  poisonous  suggestions  of  an  unprincipled  acquaintance 
to  whom  he  looks  up  with  deference !  or  to  the  wiles  of  a 
still  more  unprincipled  woman,  lying  in  wait  for  a  husband 
like  him,  shaken  in  his  fidelity  to  his  lawful  wife,  and  un¬ 
consciously  yearning  for  a  companion  more  suited  to  his 
improved  fortunes,  his  brilliant  associations,  and  his  newly 
born  taste  for  high  life  and  its  pleasures  ! 

For,  —  and  many  a  true-hearted  wife  knows  it  to  her 
cost, — there  is,  unfortunately,  in  our  great  cities  no  lack 
of  women  whose  sole  aim  in  life  is  to  insnare  some  such 
wealthy  victim,  whose  fortune  shall  minister  to  their  un- 
unslaked  thirst  for  pleasure  and  display,  utterly  reckless 
the  while  of  the  faithful  hearts  they  may  break,  of  the 
misery  and  desolation  they  may  bring  to  homes  hitherto 
blessed  with  all  domestic  virtue  and  happiness ! 

Men  lired  by  ambition,  blinded  by  passion,  are  but  ill 
suited  to  cope  with  the  wiles  and  witchery  of  some 

11  Lady  elf,  v 

Some  demon’s  mistress,  or  the  demon’s  self.” 

To  men  fallen  into  bondage  to  such  clever  and  wicked 
women,  the  cup  of  misery  to  be  drained  thenceforward  is 
all  the  more  deep  and  bitter,  that  they  retain  some  con¬ 
science,  and  remember  how  innocent  and  worthy  of  all  love 
is  the  wife  they  have  forsaken.  Such  men  dare  not  sue  for 
a  separation  in  the  courts,  and  they  scorn  to  use  the  abomi- 


RETRIBUTION. 


147 


nable  facilities  for  divorce  furnished  by  men  who  are  the 
disgrace  of  the  legal  profession,  and  sanctioned  by  local 
legislation  that  perverts  all  the  holiest  purposes  of  law. 
They  protit  by  the  forsaken  and  outraged  wife’s  horror  of 
publicity,  to  screen  their  own  shame  beneath  the  insecure 
veil  of  half-secrecy,  and  give  her  name  to  the  seducer. 
Thus  they  drag  from  one  foreign  city  to  another  their  secret 
with  them,  and  with  the  guilty  secret  they  drag  about  the 
sure  pledge  of  the  retribution  that  must  overtake  them. 

Retribution. 

The  public  have  not  forgotten  the  sudden  and  tragic  end¬ 
ing  of  more  than  one  of  these  scandalous  careers, — scan¬ 
dalous  alt  least  in  the  unblushing  effrontery  with  which  a 
brilliant  fortune  wras  lavished  in  unholy  gratifications,  even 
when  that  fortune  itself  had  not  been  acquired  by  means 
which  honest  men  abhor.  We  remember  how  the  shadow  * 
of  the  divine  hand  long  hung  above  the  home  of  the  profli¬ 
gate,  who  flattered  himself  with  impunity  because  Vanity 
Fair  did  not  discard  himself  and  his  accomplice,  and  who 
saddened  religious  hearts  by  the  spectacle  of  crime  success¬ 
ful,  unpunished,  and  apparently  secure  in  its  happiness  ; 
but  the  bolt  from  heaven  fell  at  length,  and  the  home  of 
the  criminal,  the  place  of  his  burial,  and  his  very  name, 
were, — like  those  spots  where,  in  Pagan  Pome,  the  light¬ 
ning  had  fallen  on  a  guilty  head, — inclosed  and  held  for¬ 
ever  ground  that  no  human  foot  should  tread  upon. 

Let  us  believe  it  most  firmly, — though  the  Almighty 
Father  and  Judge  of  mankind  does  allow  individuals  as 
well  as  communities  to  flourish  while  they  most  shamefully 
abuse  their  free  will,  and  seemingly  defy  and  deride  His 
most  patient  justice, — that  Justice  shall  have  its  day  for  the 
nation  and  for  the  man,  as  surely  as  to  the  longest,  longest 
Arctic  night  succeeds  the  dawn  of  God’s  sun  in  the  heavens. 

Two  instances  stare  us  in  the  face  as  we  write  ;  one  of  a 
man  who  abandoned  the  young  and  admirable  wife  of  his 
youth,  having  fallen  beneath  the  charms  of  some  Lamia. 


148 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


“Not  a  drop  of  her  blood  was  human. 

But  she  was  made  like  a  soft  sweet  woman.” 

• 

He  loathed  the  serpent  in  whose  coils  he  was  fast  bound, 
as  much  as  he  had  once  loved  and  respected  the  spotless 
bride  he  had  first  taken  to  his  parents’  home.  The  fear  of 
discovery  and  the  terrors  of  his  own  cowardly  conscience 
followed  him  in  his  dark  ways  while  on  his  native  soil,  and 
pursue  him  now  abroad  like  the  fabled  Furies  of  the  an¬ 
cients,  attached  night  and  day  to  the  footstej>s  of  the  man 
who  had  profaned  the  altar  of  his  own  liome-sanctuary  and 
quenched  with  his  own  hand  the  sacred  fire  on  his  hearth. 
Men  who  do  not  divine  the  secret  of  that  once  happy  home 
left  desecrated  and  darkened  forever,  or  who  cannot  read 
the  agony  of  the  wretched  husband’s  breast,  will  applaud 
his  genius  and  minister  to  his  vanity  :  the  world  which  only 
worships  success,  fame,  and  fortune,  may  crowd  nightly 
the  saloon  in  which  the  false  wife  queens  it  with  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  her  guilt  around  her,  while  the  true  wife  far  away 
gives  up  her  whole  existence  to  good  works,  and  her  heart 
to  the  one  hope  of  God’s  mercy.  But  not  one  day  of  intox¬ 
icating  success  ends  for  that  faithless  husband,  but  he  says 
with  agony  in  his  heart  of  hearts  as  he  lays  his  head  on  his 
sleepless  pillow, 

“  O  to-day  and  the  day  to  come  after  !  ” 

Ambition ,  Infidelity,  and  Nemesis. 

The  other  instance,  one  of  swift  and  terrible  retribution, 
was  but  little  if  at  all  spoken  of  in  the  public  press,  or  in 
the  gossip  and  scandal-loving  world  for  which  our  daily 
press  caters.  A  beautiful  wife,  in  every  way  but  one  the 
superior  of  her  unworthy  husband,  had  been  discarded  by 
him  for  one  far  her  inferior  in  graces  of  mind  and  charms 
of  person, — simply  because  the  wife  was  extremely  young 
and  modest,  while  her  rival  was  passionate,  and  well  ex¬ 
perienced  in  all  the  ways  of  Vanity  Fair. 

The  former  was  induced  by  her  wily  husband  to  travel 
abroad  and  to  remain  for  years  in  European  capitals  under 


AMBITION ,  INFIDELITY,  AND  NEMESIS. 


149 


the  tuition  of  the  best  masters,  in  order  to  complete, — as  her 
husband  said, — her  early  education,  and  thus  to  enable  her 
to  shine  on  her  return  at  the  head  of  the  establishment  he 
was  meanwhile  creating  for  her.  The  persons  who  accom¬ 
panied  the  artless  girl  were  in  the  pay  of  her  unprincipled 
husband,  and  instructed  to  expose  her  inexperience  to  the 
most  terrible  dangers.  Her  unsuspecting  innocence  as  well 
as  the  pure  love  which  filled  her  heart  for  her  husband, 
served  as  a  twofold  shield  against  even  the  thought  of 
temptation.  And  she  returned  to  her  husband  doubly  ac¬ 
complished, — we  need  not  say,  and  a  thousand  times  more 
worthy  of  the  love  of  one.  so  utterly  worthless. 

She  found  her  husband  waiting  for  her,  not  in  the  splen¬ 
did  home  of  which  he  had  so  often  written  to  her, — and 
which  she  was  never  to  set  foot  in, — but  at  a  quiet  hotel, 
where  apartments  were  ready  for  her.  There  was  in  his 
manner  a  something  that  fell  chillingly  on  her  young  heart, 
and  a  mystery  in  the  atmosphere  with  which  he  skillfully 
surrounded  her,  that  she  was  afraid  to  penetrate.  He  was, 
— he  said, — obliged  to  go  suddenly  to  Europe  on  very 
urgent  business,  and  her  coming  home  unexpectedly  and 
without  timely  warning,  had  only  anticipated  by  a  few 
weeks  their  meeting  in  Paris. 

She  did  not  believe  all  this  ;  for  she  had  discovered  of 
late  many  little  things  in  her  husband’s  conduct  and  letters 
which  made  her  suspect  both  his  good  faith  and  his  veraci¬ 
ty.  And  now,  being  told  that  she  was  to  remain  behind 
while  he  went  abroad,  and  that  she  was  to  remain  in  her 
present  lodgings  without  so  much  as  attempting  to  visit  the 
lordly  mansion  of  which  he  had  written  so  much,  she  was 
thoroughly  roused,  and  accused  her  husband  of  deceiving 
her  for  some  purpose  she  feared  to  understand. 

He  became  enraged,  and  in  his  rage  threw  off  the  mask 
he  had  worn  with  so  ill  a  grace.  He  plainly  told  her  he 
loved  her  no  longer,  and  that  he  loved  another.  He  threat¬ 
ened  her  with  instant  separation,  if  she  made  any  resistance 
to  his  will.  If  she  made  up  her  mind  to  bear  with  the  in¬ 
evitable  he  would  settle  the  new  mansion  on  her  with  a 


150 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


liberal  annuity.  If  not,  and  if  she  chose  to  defy  him,  he 
had  those  in  his  pay  who  would  swear  to  such  conduct  of 
hers  while  abroad,  as  should  secure  him  a  decree  of  divorce 
from  her,  and  leave  her  penniless  with  a  dishonored  name. 

She  heard  no  more.  A  deathdike  swoon  followed  the  reve¬ 
lation  of  her  husband’s  unspeakable  baseness.  For  several 
days  the  wretched  and  forsaken  wife  lay  between  life  and 
death,  and  then  came  a  brain-fever.  Meanwhile  the  husband 
had  left  for  Europe,  having  sent  his  paramour  and  her  child 
in  another  vessel  a  few  days  before  he  set  sail  himself. 

Several  months  elapsed  ere  the  poor  young  creature’s 
slow  convalescence  allowed  her  to  think  seriously  or  speak 
of  her  forlorn  condition.  A  sealed  letter  from .  her  hus¬ 
band  had  been  placed  in  the  hands  of  his  lawyer,  renewing 
the  offers  made  on  that  memorable  day  when  she  found  that 
her  idol  was  vile  clay.  She  spurned  both  the  offer  and  the 
advice  of  the  lawyer,  and,  as  her  parents  had  come  to  her 
in  her  extremity,  she  told  to  them  her  tale  briefly  and  sim¬ 
ply,  affirming  at  the  same  time,  that  if  her  father  could 
only  accompany  her,  she  would  follow  her  husband  and 
unmask  his  villany  wherever  she  happened  to  find  him. 

The  letter  left  with  the  lawyer  she  retained  for  this  pur¬ 
pose.  Her  father,  whose  brave  spirit  she  inherited,  consented 
readily.  His  modest  fortune  was  sufficient  to  enable  him 
to  meet  their  expenses,  and  he  would  willingly  expend  it 
all  to  vindicate  the  honor  of  his  child,  and  to  punish  her 
unworthy  husband.  So,  they  both  set  out  firmly  bent  on 
prosecuting  their  purpose  to  the  bitterest  ending. 

They  learned  on  their  arrival  in  London  that  he  was  ne¬ 
gotiating  with  one  of  the  continental  governments  the  sale 
of  a  valuable  patent  of  his  own.  In  that  capital  the  young 
wife  had  spent  a  most  agreeable  autumn  and  winter,  had 
been  presented  at  court  by  the  minister  representing  her 
own  country,  and  had  made  many  friends  among  the  high¬ 
est  aristocracy.  For,  in  truth,  her  beauty,  sprightliness, 
and  many  accomplishments  had  gained  her  all  the  more 
admiration  that  they  were  accompanied  and  heightened  by 
childlike  simplicity  and  genuine  modesty. 


NEMESIS. 


151 


Her  husband,  emboldened  by  the  reports  of  her  deathly 
sickness  and  tedious  convalescence,  had  everywhere  intro¬ 
duced  her  rival  as  his  lawful  wife  :  and,  by  some  providen¬ 
tial  permission  they  were  both  to  be  presented  at  court  on 
the  day  after  the  arrival  of  our  travelers  in  the  capital. 
There  had  been  a  change  in  the  legation,  and  to  the  new 
minister  her  husband  and  herself  were  total  strangers.  The 
injured  wife  instantly  adopted  her  plan  of  action.  She 
drove  without  a  moment’ s  delay  with  her  father  to  the  hotel 
of  a  nobleman,  into  whose  family  circle  she  had  formerly 
been  more  than  once  admitted,  and  laid  before  him  her 
wrongs,  and  what  was  to  happen  on  the  morrow. 

He  was  much  struck  by  the  sad  change  wrought  by  grief 
and  sickness  in  the  lovely  girl  who  had  endeared  herself  to 
his  family,  and  at  once  took  a  fatherly  interest  in  her  case. 
Yes  !  he  would  present  her  and  her  father  at  court  on  the 
morrow,  and  take  care  that  they  should  have  precedence  of 
the  false  husband  and  his  companion  in  guilt.  They  must, 
however,  preserve  a  strict  incognito  and  the  most  inviolable 
secrecy.  The  nobleman  meanwhile  sought  the  prime  min¬ 
ister,  and  laid  the  matter  before  him  in  confidence.  He 
warmly  espoused  the  side  of  the  injured  wife  and  her  father, 
and  took  other  measures  for  punishing  and  exposing  her 
dastardly  husband.  The  beautiful  stranger  was  remem¬ 
bered  by  many  courtiers  and  noble  ladies  in  the  royal 
antechambers,  and  greeted  with  genuine  cordial ty  as  she 
leaned  on  the  arm  of  her  noble  friend.  The  presentation 
was  made,  and  then  came  the  turn  of  her  unsuspecting 
husband,  who  was  waiting  in  another  room.  Suddenly, 
as  his  name  was  called  out  for  the  first  time,  and  he  and 
his  paramour  were  advancing  in  answer  to  the  call,  a  high 
officer  of  court  appeared,  and  openly  accused  the  culprit  of 
presenting  another  woman  as  his  wife,  whereas  at  that  mo¬ 
ment  his  lawful  wife  and  her  father  were  standing  in  the 
Presence  Chamber  conversing  with  royalty. 

We  need  not  jmrsue  in  detail  the  story  of  the  guilty  pair. 
He  was  allowed  to  escape, — most  probably  at  the  solicita¬ 
tion  of  his  kind-hearted  father-in-law.  He  disappeared  for- 


152 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


ever  from  public  notice,  either  having  capped  all  his  crimes 
with  suicide,  to  avoid  the  reprobation  of  the  world  on  whose 
breath  he  lived,  or  to  escape  the  avenging  pangs  of  his  own 
conscience.  The  woman  to  whom  he  had  sacrificed  honor, 
home,  and  happiness,  was  indebted  to  her  generous  rival 
for  her  liberation  from  prison.  She  never  returned  to  her 
native  land.  As  to  the  young  wife  herself,  we  shall  leave  her 
to  the  tender  care  of  her  parents  and  the  obscurity  in  which 
she  chose  to  bury  a  life  devoted  solely  to  the  good  of  others. 

The  Mirror  of  True  Companionship  and  Felicity. 

From  this  class  of  husbands  we  must  not  part  without 
holding  up,  for  one  moment  at  least,  the  mirror  of  another 
life  and  another  home, — as  an  incentive  to  the  inviolable 
fidelity  and  constant  devotion  which  are  characteristic  of 
all  true  men,  and  which  should  be  the  special  attribute  of 
the  man  to  whom  God  has  given  genius,  and  with  it  the  ob¬ 
ligation  of  shining  example.  Men  such  as  those  whose 
aberrations  we  have  been  describing,  have  it  in  their  power 
to  do  so  much  for  the  loved  and  loving  companion  of  their 
early  years, — just  as  the  faithful  wives  of  such  men  have  a 
wealth  of  wisdom  and  of  tenderness  to  bestow  on  their  hus¬ 
bands  amid  the  noonday  glare  and  the  golden  evening  of 
their  later  life ! 

Let  us  glance  at  a  home,  happily  still  bright  and  warm 
after  more  than  half  a  century  of  wedded  bliss  and  united 
literary  labor.  Surely,  the  man  who  rises  to  universal  fame 
by  his  pen  and  his  pencil,  may  well  stand  as  a  peer  to  the 
great  inventor,  and  in  his  home-life  serve  as  a  model  to  the 
intellectual  toilers  of  both  hemispheres. 

AFTER  FIFTY  YEARS. 

September  20,  1874. 

Yes  !  fifty  years  of  troubles — come  and  gone — 

I  count  since  first  I  gave  thee  hand  and  heart ! 

But  none  have  come  from  thee,  dear  Wife — not  one  ! 

In  griefs  that  saddened  me  thou  hadst  no  part — 

Save  when  accepting  more  than  woman’s  share 
Of  pain  and  toil,  despondency  and  care, 


153 


AFTER  FIFTY  YEARS. 

* 

My  comforter  thou  wert,  my  hope  and  trust  : 

Ever  suggesting  holy  thoughts  and  deeds  : 
Guiding  my  steps  on  earth,  through  blinding  dust. 
Into  the  Heaven-lit  path,  that  Heavenward  leads. 
So  has  it  been,  from  manhood  unto  age. 

In  every  shifting  scene  of  Life’s  sad  stage, 

Since — fifty  years  ago — a  humble  name 
I  gave  to  thee — which  thou  hast  given  to  fame — 
Rejoicing  in  the  wife  and  friend  to  find 
The  woman’s  lesser  duties — all — combined 
With  holiest  efforts  of  creative  mind. 

And  if  the  world  has  found  some  good  in  me, 

The  prompting  and  the  teaching  came  from  thee  l 
God  so  guide  both  that  so  it  ever  be  ! 

So  may  the  full  fount  of  affection  flow  ; 

Each  loving  each  as — fifty  years  ago  ! 

We  are  going  down  the  rugged  hill  of  life. 

Into  the  tranquil  valley  at  its  base  ; 

But,  hand  in  hand,  and  heart  in  heart,  dear  wife  : 
With  less  of  outer  care  and  inner  strife, 

I  look  into  thy  mind  and  in  thy  face. 

And  only  see  the  Angel  coming  nearer, 

To  make  thee  still  more  beautiful  and  dearer. 
When  from  the  thrall  and  soil  of  earth  made  free. 
Thy  prayer  is  heard  for  me,  and  mine  for  thee  !  * 


The  beautiful  friendship,  the  close  companionship  in 
labor  and  trial,  in  honor  and  obscurity,  and  the  abiding 
trust  reposed  by  each  of  the  wedded  souls  in  the  other, — 
all  so  touchingly  and  gracefully  alluded  to  in  this  affect¬ 
ing  tribute  of  a  husband  to  a  wife  after  fifty  years  of  the 
closest  union, — must  serve  as  a  fitting  close  to  the  instruc¬ 
tion  we  have  been  giving,  and  a  no  less  apt  preface  to  what 
we  are  about  to  say. 


*  Samuel  Carter  Hall.  This  estimable  gentleman  and  his  wife  (Anna  Maria 
Fielding,  a  native  of  Dublin)  are  too  well  known  to  our  readers,  by  their  many 
popular  works,  to  need  any  introduction  from  us.  Mrs  Hall’s  “Sketches  of 
Irish  Character,”  “  Lights  and  Shadows  of  Irish  Life,”  and  “  Ireland,  its  Scene¬ 
ry  and  Character,”  are  found  in  every  private  li Drary,  while  Mr.  Hall’s  “Art 
Journal  ”  is  still  a  favorite  with  all  lovers  of  art.  But  far  transcending  all 
literary  merit,  is  the  beautiful  home-life  of  this  venerable  pair. 

7* 


154 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


The  Secret  Husband. 

There  are  husbands  who  fail  grievously  in  a  point  of  duty 
as  well  as  of  deep  interest  to  themselves, — and  make  it  a 
rule  to  conceal  from  their  wives  their  business  transactions 
and  troubles,  thereby  depriving  themselves  of  counsel  which 
would  have  saved  them  from  ruin. 

We  are  not  speaking  here,  of  course,  of  professional  men, 
lawyers,  physicians,  and  others,  who  are  intrusted  with 
secrets  that  concern  the  honor  and  vital  interests  of  families 
or  individuals, — or  of  statesmen  bound  to  inviolable  secrecy 
in  matters  relating  to  the  public  service.  The  violation  of 
secrecy  in  any  such  matter  is  always  a  grievous  sin.  Nor 
is  a  husband  intrusted  with  such  weighty  matters  in  any 
way  justified  in  betraying  them  even  to  his  wife,  under  the 
pretext  that  ‘  ‘  husband  and  wife  should  never  have  secrets 
for  each  other.”  This  only  holds  in  the  matters  which  con¬ 
cern  their  own  affairs,  and  in  which  each  has  an  undoubted 
right  to  know  both  the  favorable  and  unfavorable  sides. 

Women  are  gifted  with  extraordinary  wisdom  and  saga¬ 
city.  They  see  at  a  glance  the  hidden  reason  of  things ; 
seize  with  unerring  certainty  principles  and  consequences 
that  escape  the  eye  of  man,  distracted  as  he  is  by  preoccu¬ 
pations  from  which  the  female  mind  is  happily  free. 

W e  have,  among  other  memorable  examples  of  the  blessed 
influence  of  female  counsels  both  in  domestic  and  in  pub¬ 
lic  affairs,  that  of  St.  Margaret  of  Scotland.  Not  only 
did  her  advice  induce  her  husband  Malcolm  Canmore  to 
make  of  his  court  and  household  a  model  for  every  Scot¬ 
tish  home,  but  she  made  of  Scotland  a  center  for  European 
commerce  in  a  warlike  and  barbarous  age,  fostered  at  home 
all  the  arts  of  peace,  founded  colleges,  churches,  missionary 
establishments,  and  promoted  agriculture,  manufactures, 
and  the  fine  arts.  Her  husband  did  nothing  without  her 
consent, — and  when  he  followed  his  own  judgment  and  that 
of  his  headlong  nobles  in  opposition  to  her, — as  in  the  war 
which  cost  him  his  life, — he  had  always  reason  to  rue  it. 


BLESSED  INFLUENCE  OF  WOMAN’S  COUNSELS.  155 

Even  so  was  it  with  St.  Louis,  King  of  France.  The 
wonderful  wisdom  which  his  mother  displayed  both  in  the 
administration  of  the  kingdom  during  his  minority  and  in 
his  own  education,  caused  him  to  consult  her  ever  after¬ 
ward  on  all  matters  of  moment.  And  he  trained  his  queen, 
Marguerite  of  -Provence,  to  be,  like  his  mother,  his  con¬ 
stant  and  principal  adviser.  Thus,  when  taken  prisoner 
with  his  sick  knights  in  Egypt,  he  would  accept  no  terms 
of  ransom  from  the  Saracens  that  had  not  been  sanctioned 
by  the  queen,  who  was  in  Palestine.  And  when  the  infi- 
dels  expressed  their  astonishment  at  his  deference  for  a 
woman,  his  proud  answer  was,  that  the  woman  “was  his 
lady  and  his  companion.” 

Were  a  more  recent  instance  required  in  persons  of  royal 
station,  we  should  remind  our  readers  of  the  determination 
of  Queen  Isabella,  the  Catholic,  to  pawn  her  crown  jewels 
in  order  to  pay  the  expenses  of  the  momentous  expedition 
which  discovered  America.  King  Ferdinand  and  the  en¬ 
tire  royal  council  had  set  their  faces  against  the  scheme. 
But  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  the  heart  of  the  Queen  as  He 
had  the  soul  of  Christopher  Columbus,  and  of  her  might  be 
said  what  the  poet  has  sung  of  her  illustrious  servant : 

“  Him  by  tlie  Paynim  bard  descried  of  yore, 

And  ere  his  coming  sung  on  either  shore. 

Him  could  not  I  exalt — by  Heaven  designed 
To  lift  the  veil  that  covered  half  mankind  !  ”  * 

To  business  men,  as  well  as  to  others,  there  are  diffi¬ 
culties  which  a  woman’s  ready  wit  and  deft  fingers  will 
unravel,  when  men’s  self-sufficient  and  slow  wisdom  would 
only  perplex  matters  and  render  them  inextricable.  If  the 
husbands  to  whom  we  address  ourselves  be  the  true  men 
we  believe  them,  they  will  follow  the  example  of  the  great 
statesman  and  heroic  soldier-king,  St.  Louis,  and  make  of 
his  wife,  the  mother  of  his  children,  “his  lady  and  com¬ 
panion,”  to  be  consulted  before  and  above  all  persons  on 
earth,  because  more  interested  than  the  whole  world  in 


*  Rogers,  “  Voyage  of  Columbus.” 


156 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


giving  him  good  advice,  and  often  far  more  able  to  do  so 
than  any  one  living  person. 

How  many  admirable  women  have  we  known,  dear  reader, 
wedded  to  men  whom  a  stupid  prejudice  about  women’s 
radical  unfitness  for  business  kept  from  ever  opening  their 
mind  to  their  companions,  till  the  tidings  of  their  common 
ruin  burst  upon  them,  like  a  sudden  deluge  sweeping  for¬ 
tune,  home,  and  everything  before  it !  If  the  wife  had 
been  made  acquainted,  step  by  step,  with  her  husband’ s  em¬ 
barrassments,  it  is  ten  to  one,  but  she  had  found  a  sure 
way  out  of  them  ;  or,  had  not  that  been  possible,  she  would 
have  taken  wise  precautions  against  the  evil  day.  But 
what  a  cruel  wrong  is  done  to  her  judgment,  her  heart,  her 
home,  and  her  dear  ones,  when  she  is  kept  studiously  in 
the  dark  till  fortune,  home,  and  happiness  are  swept  away 
from  her  as  by  a  flood  coming  down  on  them  in  the  night ! 

We  say  this  much  on  a  very  practical  subject,  and  pass 
to  one  of  still  greater  practical  importance  ; — the  shiftless¬ 
ness  of  some  husbands,  the  greed  and  avarice  of  others,  and 
the  prodigality  of  still  another  class.  We  can  only  devote 
a  few  short  paragraphs  to  each. 

The  Shiftless  Husband. 

The  world  knows  of  very  many  such  ;  and  by  the  world, 
which  worships  success  and  honors  the  thrift  that  leads  to 
it,  the  idle  and  shiftless  head  of  a  family  is  treated  with 
universal  and  merited  contempt. 

That  in  European  lands,  where  some  men  are  born  to 
wealth  and  high  rank,  there  should  be  found  many  who,  in 
anticipation  of  their  inherited  honors  and  riches,  indulge 
in  a  life  of  ease,  and  never  learn  the  value  of  work  done 
for  its  own  sake,  or  the  blissful  reward  which  attends  ap¬ 
plication  to  healthful  study  and  to  self-improvement,  as 
well  as  the  self-approbation  of  a  conscious  devotion  to  the 
welfare  of  others, — is  a  matter  of  course. 

In  England,  with  its  hereditary  nobility,  its  landed  gen¬ 
try,  and  its  entailed  estates,  if  there  be  found  among  the 


SHIFTLESSNESS. 


157 


privileged  classes  one  man  wlio  spends  his  youth  in  utter 
idleness  and  ignorance  of  all  ennobling  pursuits,  there  are  at 
least  ten  who  devote  their  whole  time  to  labor  for  the  good 
of  others  much  more  than  for  the  cultivation  of  their  own 
intellectual  powers  or  the  development  of  their  material  re¬ 
sources.  The  heirs  to  a  great  title  or  to  splendid  ances¬ 
tral  wealth,  are  for  the  most  part  to  be  seen  among  the 
most  laborious  of  the  public  servants,  or  the  most  indus¬ 
trious  promoters  of  local  enterprise  and  industry.  It  is  the 
strength  of  England  that  her  aristocracy,  whether  of  rank 
or  of  wealth,  thoroughly  understand  the  meaning  of  Noblesse 
oblige ,  and  will  not  allow  themselves  or  their  sons  to  lose 
the  leadership  of  the  country  by  listlessness,  indolence,  or 
incapacity  to  manage  their  own  estates  and  the  interests  of 
their  county,  as  well  as  the  affairs  of  the  nation. 

The  young  man  who  dawdles  and  dreams  till  a  coronet 
drops  on  his  empty  head,  or  unlimited  wealth  relieves  him 
of  debt  and  permits  him  to  indulge  his  sloth  or  his  sen¬ 
suality,  is  the  exception  among  his  peers,  as  he  is  their 
scorn. 

But  that  in  a  country  like  America,  where  every  son  of 
the  soil  is  free  to  be  the  architect  of  his  own  fortune  and 
fame,  and  the  creator  of  his  own  greatness, — there  should 
be  found  men  to  say  to  themselves  and  others,  that  “a  gen¬ 
tleman  is  not  born  to  work,” — sounds  like  a  practical  ab¬ 
surdity.  Yet  have  we  seen  such  un-American  Americans, 
and  heard  them  proclaim  this  new  code  of  gentility  to  their 
own  children  as  well  as  to  others. 

Of  course  these  are  no  true  men ;  on  the  contrary,  they 
disgrace  the  very  name  of  manhood,  and  are  either  totally 
ignorant  of  what  constitutes  manliness,  or  affect  to  ignore  it 
in  their  utter  abjection.  For  a  man,  to  vindicate  his  claim 
to  the  essential  attributes  and  the  simplest  virtues  of  man¬ 
hood,  must  do  the  work  of  a  man,  and  display  in  the  per¬ 
formance  of  his  life-work  the  qualities  which  make  up 
what  all  denominate  manliness. 


158 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


TJnmqnly  Men . 

In  the  face  of  these  plain  truths,  that  a  creature  calling 
himself  a  man  should  take  on  himself  the  duties  of  a  hus¬ 
band,  undertake  to  provide  a  home  for  the  wife  he  has  cho¬ 
sen,  and  to  feed  and  educate  the  beings  who  call  him  father, 
— while  consuming  his  days  in  sloth,  trusting  to  the  provi¬ 
sion  made  for  him  by  his  parents  to  supply  all  their  wants 
and  to  furnish  him  the  means  of  gratifying  his  own  low 
inclinations  and  appetites, — without  ever  seriously  endea¬ 
voring  to  add  to  this  provision  by  his  own  personal  labor, 
and  looking  forward  to  the  death  of  some  rich  relative  for 
some  legacy  that  may  stand  between  himself,  his  wife,  his 
children,  and  starvation, — is  simply  monstrous  ! 

These  .unmanly  men  neither  dig,  nor  plow,  nor  sow,  nor 
reap  ;  the  rising  and  the  setting  of  God’ s  sun  does  not  mean 
for  them  the  beginning  of  labor,  and  of  rest  after  labor ;  the 
seasons  come  and  go  for  them  without  teaching  any  practi¬ 
cal  lesson  or  furthering  any  useful  purpose.  They  are  like 
the  foul  and  cowardly  birds  of  the  Dismal  Swamp,  that 
have  neither  the  strength  nor  the  energy  to  hunt  down  a 
living  prey,  but  look  out  for  the  animals  that  perish  in  the 
treacherous  and  pestilential  waste,  and  then  perch  them¬ 
selves  on  the  surrounding  trees,  watching  patiently  the  pro¬ 
gress  of  decomposition,  and  whetting  their  hungry  beaks 
for  the  auspicious  moment. 

These  ignoble  birds  of  prey  that  are  evermore  speculating 
upon  what  death  may  bring  them,  seem  gifted  only  with  an 
unlimited  faculty  of  consuming  what  they  never  toiled  for, 
of  wasting  what  they  have  not  husbanded  or  garnered  up. 

To  appeal  to  the  reason,  the  conscience,  the  sentiments 
of  these  men,  were  as  bootless  as  to  preach  to  a  flock  of 
vultures.  Either  the  guilty  neglect  of  the  parents  who  edu¬ 
cated  them, — or,  rather,  who  left  them  to  grow  up  without 
training  or  discipline  of  any  kind, — is  to  be  considered  as 
the  prime  cause  of  their  own  degradation  and  of  the  misery 
they  bring  on  others  ;  or  the  habit,  indulged  from  boyhood, 


UNMANLY  MEN 


159 


of  expecting  to  inherit  the  wealth  of  others,  killed  in  them¬ 
selves  all  desire  of  self-improvement,  and  prevented  the  for¬ 
mation  of  the  blessed  virtues  of  self-reliance,  self-respect, 
and  independent  exertion. 

Where  these  men  are  shiftless  and  helpless  without  being 
intemperate  and  dissolute, — the  evil,  comparatively,  is  tol¬ 
erable  to  the  poor  wife  left  to  depend  on  her  labor  for 
the  bread  of  her  children,  as  well  as  for  that  which  feeds 
the  worthless  husband.  We  have  seen  these  miserable 
husbands  pass  from  stalwart  manhood  to  robust  old  age, 
perfectly  satisfied  with  themselves,  as  vain  of  their  quality 
of  gentlemen  and  of  their  privileged  exemption  from  labor, 
as  the  peacock  that  airs  his  plumage  on  the  housetop  and 
displays  his  brilliant  colors  to  the  admiring  sun,  while  his 
female  is  indefatigable  in  some  remote  walk  of  the  garden 
or  the  forest  in  purveying  for  her  tender  brood, — anxious 
only  that  her  lordly  mate  shall  not  cross  her  path  or  perse¬ 
cute  their  common  progeny. 

Leave  we  the  despicable  tribe  of  shiftless  husbands  ; 
they  resemble  the  wretched  multitude  whom  Dante  met 
with  outside  the  walls  of  Hell,  unworthy  of  the  society  of 
either  the  Blessed  or  the  Damned : 

“  From  his  hounds  Heaven  drove  them  forth. 

Not  to  impair  his  luster,  nor  the  depth 
Of  Hell  receives  them,  lest  the  accursed  tribe 
Should  glory  thence  with  exultation  vain.  . 

.  .  .  Their  blind  life 
So  meanly  passes,  that  all  other  lots 
They  envy.  Fame  of  them  the  world  hath  none. 

Nor  suffers  ;  mercy  and  justice  scorn  them  both. 

Speak  not  of  them,  but  look,  and  pass  them  by.  ”  * 


Grasping  and  Avaricious  Husbands . 

It  is  a  sacred  duty  for  the  head  of  a  family  to  make  suita¬ 
ble  provision  for  his  household,  for  the  husband  to  place  at 
his  wife’s  disposal  the  fruits  of  his  thrift,  as  it  is  her  duty 
to  dispense  it  prudently  within  the  home  :  it  is  the  bounden 


*  Inferno,  iii. ;  Cary’s  translation. 


160 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM.- 


obligation  of  both  to  lay  np  for  their  dear  ones  and  for 
their  own  old  age.  Thus  providence  and  economy  are 
among  the  first  virtues  enjoined  on  parents.  We  omit  all 
mention  here  of  the  duties  of  hospitality  and  charity. 

Equally  opposed  to  the  wise  forethought  which  urges  a 
parent  to  labor  and  lay  up  for  his  dear  ones,  and  to  pru¬ 
dent  generosity  which  should  guide  himself  and  his  com¬ 
panion  in  the  use  of  their  store, — are  greed  in  acquiring, 
avarice  in  retaining,  and  prodigality  in  wasting  what  God 
gives  for  such  definite  and  holy  purposes. 

It  is  a  virtue, — a  blessed  one  too, — to  be  industrious  and 
indefatigable  in  providing  against  the  present  and  the  future 
need  ;  it  is  no  less  a  virtue  to  be  moderate  in  using  for  one’ s 
personal  comforts  or  wants,  generous  in  meeting  the  neces¬ 
sary  demands  of  family  life  according  to  one’s  condition, 
and  generous  as  well  in  giving  hospitality,  and  in  meet¬ 
ing  the  requirements  of  religion,  charity,  and  patriotism. 
There  are  men  who,  while  they  bestow  liberally  for  all  these 
various  purposes,  what  they  have  labored  hard  to  acquire, 
are  still  careful  not  to  leave  the  home  they  have  either  built 
up  themselves  or  inherited,  without  abundant  means  for 
maintaining  its  splendor  after  their  own  day. 

But  what  shall  we  say  of  fathers  of  families  who  make  of 
the  labor  of  amassing  riches,  not  a  means  for  the  happiness 
of  their  families,  — but  an  end  ?  who  earn  and  hold  money, 
not  for  the  purpose  of  using  it  for  the  comfort  of  their  dear 
ones  or  their  own,  but  simply  for  its  own  sake, — to  have  it, 
to  own  it,  to  make  it  grow,  and  grow,  and  grow  forever, — 
like  a  tree  bearing  golden  fruit  that  no  one, — nor  them¬ 
selves,  nor  others, — may  either  gather,  touch,  or  taste,  in 
this  life  or  the  life  to  come  ? 

It  cannot,  in  the  gold-seeking  and  worshiping  age  in 
which  we  live,  be  too  strongly  insisted  on,  that  money  is  a 
means  to  an  end,  not  the  end  itself, — a  means  of  making 
life  happy  and  honorable,  of  helping  others  toward  useful¬ 
ness,  honor,  and  happiness  ;  but  not  in  itself  an  end,  so 
that  the  possession  and  the  hoarding  of  money  should  be 
for  itself  alone,  without  aiming  at  anything  beyond  that. 


SONG  OF  FORTUNE 


161 


Hence  tlie  absurdity  and  tlie  guilt  of  so  giving  one’ s  self 
up  to  making  money,  that  in  doing  so,  one  forgets  con¬ 
science,  health,  the  claims  of  one’ s  family,  the  needs  of  the 
poor,  and  every  other  generous  and  useful  purpose  which 
money  is  calculated  to  promote. 

It  is  not  so  unfrequent  a  thing  to  hear,  in  this  great  city 
of  New  York,  of  some  wretched  creature  who  died  of  sheer 
want  in  a  garret  or  some  filthy  corner,  deprived  of  all 
human  aid,  of  all  the  comforts  of  society  and  religion,  of 
all  the  consolations  of  earth  and  heaven,  reputed  in  life  ab¬ 
jectly  poor,  and  most  industrious  in  having  others  believe 
so,  and  yet  dying  worth  thousands  ! — thousands  that  will 
profit  nobody,  nor  the  wretched  soul  gone  to  its  account, 
and  which  was  not  created  to  make  money  for  money’s 
sake,  nor  even  the  poor  of  the  neighborhood  whom  not  a 
penny  of  it  shall  ever  reach,  nor  the  unknown  family  and 
relatives  whom  the  miserable  hoarder  forsook  or  forgot,  in 
order  to  indulge  this  solitary  and  absorbing  passion  of  add¬ 
ing  little  to  little  without  cessation. 


“  O  wealth,  with  thee  is  won 
A  worm  to  gnaw  for  ever  on  his  soul 
Whose  abject  life  is  laid  in  thy  control  ! 

If  also  ye  take  not  what  piteous  death 
They  ofttimes  make,  whose  hoards  were  manifold, 
Who  cities  had  and  gold. 

And  multitudes  of  men  beneath  their  hand  ; 

Then  he  among  you  that  most  angereth 
Shall  bless  me  (Fortune),  saying,  ‘  I  worship  thee 
That  I  was  not  as  he 

Whose  death  is  thus  accursed  throughout  the  land/ 
But  now  your  living  souls  are  held  in  band 
Of  avarice,  shutting  you  from  the  true  light, 

Which  shows  how  sad  and  slight 
Are  this  world’s  treasured  riches  and  array 
That  still  change  hands  a  hundred  times  a  day. 

i(  For  me, — could  envy  enter  in  my  sphere, 

Which  of  all  human  taint  is  clean  and  quit, — 

I  well  might  harbor  it 
When  I  behold  the  peasant  at  his  toil, 


162 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

\  ✓ 

Guiding  bis  team,  untroubled,  free  from  fear, 

He  leaves  his  perfect  furrow  as  he  goes. 

And  gives  his  field  repose 

From  thorns  and  tares  and  weeds  that  vex  the  soil : 

Thereto  he  labors,  and  without  turmoil 
Entrusts  his  work  to  God,  content  if  so 
Such  guerdon  from  it  grow 
That  in  the  year  his  family  shall  live  ; 

Nor  care  nor  thought  to  other  things  will  give.”* 

Meanness ,  Greed ,  Cruelty ,  and  Misery. 

One  home  we  cannot  bnt  think  of  with  unalloyed  grief, 
for  it  touched  us  nearly.  The  wife,  of  gentle  blood,  un¬ 
common  beauty,  and  goodness  greater  than  her  beauty,  was 
wooed  and  won  by  a  man  her  equal  in  birth  and  almost  her 
equal  in  age, — a  young  and  brilliant  officer  high  in  favor 
with  the  government.  She  brought  him  a  fortune  which 
more  than  sufficed  to  support  them  handsomely,  but  which 
was  allowed  to  accumulate  till  her  dying  day,  while  his 
own  yearly  income  went  far  beyond  the  expenses  of  their 
household.  Seven  children  were  born  to  them,  not  one  of 
whom  ever  inherited  any  share  of  the  fortune  of  either 
parent. 

His  absorbing  passion,  almost  from  the  first  year  of  their 
wedded  life,  was  to  accumulate  money,  fearful, — as  he  often 
expressed  it  to  his  familiars  (friends  he  had  none), — lest  his 
children  should  some  day  be  left  penniless.  Unfortunately 
the  marriage  settlement  gave  him  the  sole  management  of 
their  joint  property  ;  nor  did  he  rest  satisfied  till  his  wife 
had  been  bullied  and  persecuted  into  making  over  her 
property  to  him  in  his  own  absolute  right. 

She  was  not  an  extravagant,  nor  even  a  worldly  woman. 
She  was  conscientious,  solidly  pious,  fond  of  her  home  and 
devoted  to  her  children, — a  woman  whose  qualities  should 
have  made  any  husband  happy,  and  could  have  adorned 
any  station. 

He  never  allowed  her  to  dispose  of  a  single  dollar  of  the 


*  Guido  Cavalcanti,  “  Song  of  Fortune,”  in  Rossetti’s  “  Early  Italian  Poets.” 


THE  SPENDTHRIFT  HUSBAND. 


163 


revenue  of  her  own  property,  nor  even  to  regulate  the  ex¬ 
penses  of  her  household ;  no,  not  so  much  as  to  purchase 
what  was  necessary  for  the  table.  He  was  his  own  caterer  ; 
went  daily  to  market  with  the  first  light  of  morning  ;  and 
disdained  not  to  haggle  with  fishwoman  and  butcher,  till 
he  had  shamed  them  to  his  own  terms,  buying  rarely  any 
but  the  cheapest  fish  or  the  poorest  meat. 

He  half-starved  his  children,  making  up  in  liberal  sleep 
what  he  refused  them  in  substantial  and  necessary  diet, 
and  he  starved  their  souls  as  well.  For  he  would  not  allow 
them  to  be  educated  up  to  their  condition ;  nor  would  he 
permit  them  to  associate  with  those  of  their  own  class, — 
being  unwilling  that  their  raiment  should  be  superior  to 
their  spare  diet  or  their  scanty  schooling. 

He  would  have  his  wife, — whom  he  shockingly  ill-treated, 
— dismiss  her  servants,  and  attend  to  the  household  work 
as  well  as  the  education  of  her  children.  But  she  at  length 
rebelled  against  a  tyranny  and  a  brutality  become  the  more 
intolerable,  that  the  unmanly  husband  had  taken  to  soli¬ 
tary  tippling  after  the  daily  official  duties  were  over,  and 
never  went  to  bed  sober. 

At  length  his  violence  forced  her  to  take  refuge  with  her 
nearest  relative  far  away.  She  never  recovered  from  his 
latest  ill-usage.  The  children,  one  after  another,  were 
driven  from  their  most  unhappy  home  ;  the  father  married 
his  cook,  and  died  leaving  to  her  and  her  children  the  little 
he  possessed  at  the  time.  For  by  a  just  retribution  of  for¬ 
tune,  his  accumulated  wealth  had  been  vested  in  ruinous 
ventures,  and  was  swept  beyond  his  reach,  leaving  him  the 
most  wretched  and  one  of  the  vilest  of  men. 

The  Spendthrift  Husband. 

Of  this  very  numerous  class  we  need  only  discuss  one  or 
two  varieties  ; — the  others  are  so  much  akin  to  the  intem¬ 
perate  and  the  debauchee, — that  we  shall  not  consider  them 
separately. 

There  are  spendthrifts  who  are  not  addicted  to  the  odious 


164 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


vices  begotten  of  sensuality.  Their  wasteful  extravagance 
lias  its  source  in  other,  higher,  and  more  refined  tastes. 
The  reckless  indulgence  of  these  tastes,  however,  works  a 
no  less  fatal  ruin  to  the  family  substance  and  home. 

There  are  husbands,  whose  sole  purpose  in  life  is  to  make 
their  wealth  the  means  of  outshining  their  neighbors  :  men 
troubled  with  an  inordinate  amount  of  vanity,  and  with 
very  little  brains  ;  who  are  utterly  unable  to  calculate  their 
own  resources,  and  spend  without  ever  stopping  to  consider 
how  much  they  are  unable  to  spend. 

Many  of  our  readers  will  recall  William  Dorritt,  Esquire, 
“  the  Father  of  the  Marshalsea,”  gifted  with  but  two  facul¬ 
ties, — the  heartless  vanity  that  accepted  the  services  and  lib¬ 
erality  of  strangers  as  well  as  the  boundless  devotion  of  his 
own  child  as  the  homage  due  to  his  own  transcendent  supe¬ 
riority,  and  the  blind  prodigality  with  which  his  inherited 
wealth  was  squandered  for  the  mere  purpose  of  eclipsing 
others  and  asserting  his  own  gentility.  Of  course,  vanity 
being  always  mean,  this  arrogant  self-assertion,  in  the  hour 
of  ill  fortune  will  condescend  to  beg  and  to  borrow,  and  in 
the  hour  of  prosperity  will  basely  ignore  the  friends  whose 
purse  and  hand  were  ever  the  most  open ;  and  equally,  of 
course,  this  purse-proud  meanness  will  make  itself  most 
prominent  at  the  very  height  of  good  fortune,  by  tyranniz¬ 
ing  over  dependants,  browbeating  all  persons  of  equal  or 
inferior  rank,  and  by  cringing  like  an  Oriental  slave  to  supe- 
rior  rank  or  ability. 

These  men,  even  when  not  afflicted  with  this  morbid  van¬ 
ity,  cannot  keep  out  of  debt ;  for  they  cannot  refuse  them¬ 
selves  any  of  the  beautiful  and  costly  things  which  strike 
their  fancy.  This  is  the  least  odious  form  of  extravagance, 
— the  passion  for  books,  for  objects  of  art,  or  for  other  costly 
hobbies.  It  tends,  none  the  less,  to  ruin  the  happiness  and 
independence  of  the  home,  and  to  imperil  its  very  exist¬ 
ence.  For,  this  extravagant  and  uncontrollable  fondness 
for  things  which  are  above  one’s  means,  keeps  the  hus¬ 
band  continually  in  debt,  deprives  the  wife  and  children, 
not  only  of  the  comforts  and  enjoyments  belonging  to 


THE  SPENDTHRIFT  HUSBAND. 


165 


their  condition,  but  frequently  of  the  bare  necessaries  of 
life. 

Such  men  are  in  reality  overgrown  children,  who  ought 
to  be  kept  in  perpetual  tutelage  ;  who  are  incapable  of  man¬ 
aging  their  own  affairs.  Their  extravagant  tastes  are  but  a 
higher  and  more  refined  sensuality,  just  as  ruinous  as  the 
drunkard’s  proclivities. 

The  extravagant,  however,  can  be  made  amenable  to 
reason  ;  for  their  brain  is  not  habitually  crazed  with  drink 
and  their  intellectual  powers  weakened  or  obliterated  by 
beastly  indulgence.  They  can  understand  that  indebted¬ 
ness  is  slavery  ;  that  to  take  from  the  most  urgent  needs  of 
one’s  family  what  is  expended  on  mere  intellectual  or  artis¬ 
tic  pleasure  is  a  grievous  wrong. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


THE  INTEMPERATE  HUSBAND. 

In  tlie  third  circle  I  arrive,  of  showers 
Ceaseless,  accursed,  heavy  and  cold,  unchanged 
Forever,  both  in  kind  and  in  degree. 

Large  hail,  discolored  water,  sleety  flaw 

Through  the  dun  midnight  air  streamed  down  amain. 

Stank  all  the  land  whereon  the  tempest  fell. 

Cerberus,  cruel  monster,  fierce  and  strange, 

Through  his  wide  threefold  throat,  barks  as  a  dog 
Over  the  multitude  immersed  beneath. 

...  So  passed  we  through  that  mixture  foul 
Of  spirits  and  rain,  with  tardy  steps. 

Inferno,  vi. 

t 

.  .  .  Weakness  is  thy  excuse, 

And  I  believe  it ;  weakness  to  resist. 

...  If  weakness  may  excuse, 

What  murderer,  what  traitor,  parricide, 

Incestuous,  sacrilegious,  but  may  plead  it  ? 

All  wickedness  is  weakness  :  that  plea  therefore 
With  God  or  man  will  gain  thee  no  remission  .  .  . 

In  vain  thou  striv’st  to  cover  shame  with  shame, 

Or  by  evasions  thy  crime  uncover’st  more. 

Milton,  Samson  Agonistes. 

The  sense  of  the  most  enlightened  Christian  ages,  basing 
its  judgment  on  Holy  Writ  as  well  as  on  the  fitness  of 
things,  deemed  it  equitable  that  the  punishments  of  eternity 
should  be  a  real  expiation  of  the  guilt,  and  by  the  sense  that 
had  sinned.  Hence,  intemperance  in  all  its  loathsome  forms, 
is  represented  by  the  great  poet, — as  punished  in  a  land  of 
eternal  darkness,  where  the  abject  multitude  were  immersed 
in  “a  mixture  foul”  of  discolored  water  and  sleety  slush, 
large  hail  and  rain  pelting  the  sufferers  unceasingly,  and 
filling  the  land  and  the  atmosphere  with  intolerable  stench. 
Over  this  vile  and  filthy  fold  of  the  drunkard, — as  over 

1G6 


THE  INTEMPERATE  HUSBAND. 


167 


some  miry  farm- yard  with  its  swine,— the  monstrous  form 
of  three-headed  Cerberus, — the  gluttonous  and  insatiable, 
kept  sleepless  watch,  rending  the  prostrate  forms  with 
his  cruel  fangs,  and  tilling  the  hideous  darkness  with  his 
continuous  barking. 

Surely,  when  one  considers  calmly  what  that  form  of  in¬ 
temperance  is  which  we  designate  as  habitual  drunkenness 
in  a  husband  and  parent, — it  must  be  evident  that  the  eter¬ 
nal  death  as  here  described,  is  but  the  natural  consequence 
and  just  retribution  of  the  drunkard’s  present  life.  For  the 
intrinsic  guilt  of  intoxication  consists  not  so  much  in  the 
gratification  of  the  animal  appetite  for  strong  drink,  or  of 
the  craving  for  the  pleasurable  excitement  which  is  the  first 
stage  of  inebriety, — as  in  depriving  one’s  self  knowingly  of 
the  mastery  over  one’s  bodily  faculties  and,  above  all,  over 
one’s  reason. 

It  is  this  temporary  loss  and  suspension  of  the  highest 
powers  of  the  soul, — of  those  which  are  Godlike  in  man, — 
that  constitutes  the  specific  guilt  of  drunkenness.  The  sin 
of  the  suicide,  the  self-destroyer,  the  man  who  takes  away 
his  own  life, — is  a  something  most  awful  to  contemplate. 
It  is  the  throwing  away,  by  one  act  of  despair  or  defiance, 
of  all  the  gifts  of  the  most  bountiful  Creator,  the  unmaking 
of  all  the  gracious  plans  of  His  most  wise  providence  in 
favor  of  a  human  soul ;  it  is  the  setting  aside,  against  all 
the  laws  of  nature  and  nature’s  God,  of  one’s  responsibili¬ 
ties  to  Him  and  to  our  kind  in  the  present  and  throughout 
the  boundless  future. 

This,  and  much  more  than  this,  is  all  comprised  in  self- 
destruction.  But  intoxication,  whether  by  alcohol  or  by 
opium,  is  the  beginning  of  self-destruction.  It  ends, — as 
every  enlightened  reader  knows, — by  destroying  the  body, 
by  debasing  and  destroying  the  soul,  by  destroying  the 
home,  breaking  the  wife’s  heart,  disgracing  and  ruining  the 
children.  It  brings  man,  destined  for  the  close  companion¬ 
ship  of  God  and  his  angels  in  the  life  to  come,  down  to  the 
level  of  the  beast  in  this  world.  .  ,  .  But,  no !  this  is  most 
unjust  to  the  beast. 


168 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


It  is  but  too  familiar  an  expression  with  us  when  we  see 
a  man  surrendering  himself  to  the  excesses  of  inebriety,  to 
say  that  “he  is  making  a  beast  of  himself.”  The  brute  is 
never  false  to  its  nature,  never  sinks  below  the  level  of  the 
instincts,  the  intelligence  that  nature  has  given  it.  No¬ 
thing  is  more  temperate  and  abstemious  than  the  irrational 
animal  which  we  are  wont  injuriously  to  compare  with  de¬ 
graded  man,  when  he  acts  against  the  laws  alike  of  his 
spiritual  and  his  animal  nature.  The  dog,  even  in  its  ex¬ 
treme  thirst,  will  lap  up  daintily  just  enough  of  water  to 
satisfy  its  need.  It  is  most  dainty,  when  it  has  no  choice 
between  pure  and  impure  water,  in  barely  lapping  once  or 
twice  of  the  latter ;  and  under  no  pressure  of  appetite  will 
it  so  much  as  taste  of  what  it  knows  to  be  poisonous  or 
hurtful.  A  very  ferocious  bear  in  the  Jardin  des  Plantes , 
at  Paris,  was  condemned  to  be  killed  by  the  authorities. 
The  keepers  resolved  to  destroy  it  by  poison.  So  they  im¬ 
pregnated  the  bread  and  injected  the  meat  they  threw  to  it 
with  the  most  deadly  substances  known  to  the  chemist. 
The  animal,  although  kept  without  food  for  several  days 
to  render  it  the  more  ravenous,  was  too  wary  to  follow  the 
promptings  of  its  hunger.  It  smelled  the  treacherous  food 
over  and  over  again,  turned  it  on  every  side,  and  then  went 
away.  Presently,  however,  —  as  if  it  had  been  devising 
some  plan  to  meet  the  difficulty, — it  returned  to  where  the 
poisoned  food  lay,  and  pushed  it  steadily  toward  its  water- 
trough.  Then,  after  washing  it  copiously  again  and  again, 
smelling  after  each  ablution,  it  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
it  might  safely  taste  it.  It  did  not  eat  it  up  all  at  once,  but 
by  small  pieces,  washing  each  of  these  over  again  as  a  fur¬ 
ther  precaution.  This  being  reported  by  the  keepers  to  the 
magistrates,  they  revoked  the  order  for  the  animal’s  de¬ 
struction.  It  deserved  to  live. 

It  is  also  well  known  how  much  labor  and  fatigue  the 
camel  can  undergo  amid  the  burning  sands  of  Africa.  This 
most  useful  beast  is  the  very  impersonation  of  temperance, 
performing  the  longest  journeys  under  the  most  trying  cir¬ 
cumstances,  living  on  the  scantiest  fare  and  depending  on 


MAN  FAR  BENEATH  THE  BRUTE. 


169 


the  supply  of  water  laid  up  in  its  complex  stomach.  It  is  a 
supply  on  which  its  master  often  depends  in  the  direst  ex¬ 
tremity  of  thirst, — the  frugal  animal  thus  saving  the  life  of 
man  at  the  expense  of  its  own. 

We  do  the  beast  a  foul  wrong  when  we  say,  that  man  by 
drunkenness  sinks  down  to  its  level, — whereas  it  is  only  by 
sheer  violence  that  brutal  man  can  bring  the  beast  down  to 
his  own  level  by  making  it  drink  perforce.  Yet,  though 
you  may  reduce  the  poor  brute  to  helpless  intoxication, 
do  you  not  bring  it  down  to  your  level.  It  has  no  moral 
law  to  guide  it ;  and,  if  it  had,  you  can  only  make  it  drunk 
by  sheer  violence  done  its  nature  and  in  spite  of  its  own 
desperate  struggles. 

This  outrage  was  perpetrated  on  the  brute  once, — and 
during  a  war  which  we  shall  not  designate  here.  A  be¬ 
sieging  army  had  been  for  months  beleaguering  a  mighty 
fortress  ;  and,  as  the  siege  dragged  its  slow  length  along, 
the  officers  were  wont  to  spend  the  uncertain  intervals  of 
battle  in  such  amusements  as  they  could  find  or  devise. 
Neighboring  regiments  had  their  festive  meetings,  and 
tlieir  leaders  but  too  often  forgot  past  dangers  and  the  perils 
of  the  morrow  in  most  unseemly  dissipation.  One  of  the 
most  notable  frequenters  of  these  clubs  was  a  young  officer 
who  was  always  accompanied  by  a  magnificent  Newfound¬ 
land  dog.  One  evening, — the  eve,  indeed,  of  a  day  since 
become  famous, — the  gallant  friends  had  indulged  in  longer 
libations  and  louder  mirth  than  ever  ;  they  had  ‘  ‘  made  a 
night  of  it,”  not  knowing,  they  said,  who  would  survive 
the  struggle  on  the  morrow. 

Just  as  they  were  about  to  separate,  some  one  remarked 
that  the  Newfoundland  dog  was  the  only  sober  individual 
present,  and  thereupon  it  was  moved  and  resolved  that  the 
dog  be  made  drunk.  So,  there  are  these  gentlemen,  these 
brave  defenders  of  their  country’s  honor,  engaged  in  hold¬ 
ing  the  poor  struggling  animal  down,  while  they  poured 
wine  and  brandy  down  its  throat.  The  innocent  and  tem¬ 
perate  animal  resisted  frantically  the  outrage  done  to  it  by 
the  united  strength  of  these  u  lords  of  creation  ;  ”  at  length, 
8 


170 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


half  strangled,  half  poisoned,  sick  and  helpless,  the  poor 
dog  writhed  on  the  ground,  rejecting,  with  the  native  vigor 
of  its  unimparied  stomach,  the  poison  it  had  been  forced  to 
swallow. 

So,  the  dog  as  well  as  its  master  had  to  be  “  carried 
home  ”  that  night.  The  struggle  of  the  morrow  passed  by 
without  completely  ending  the  siege.  Of  those  who  had 
been  actors  in  the  inhuman  scene  just  described,  we  know 
not  how  many  perished.  But,  not  very  long  thereafter,  the 
survivors  met,  as  before,  to  make  merry,  and  with  them 
came  the  master  of  the  dog, — and  the  dog  also, — though  not 
quite  all  the  way. 

He  had  followed  his  master,  forgiving,  faithful  animal 
as  he  was,  the  cruel  injury  done  himself,  on  that  memora¬ 
ble  night ; — had  followed  his  master  through  the  camp 
from  tent  to  tent,  and  line  to  line,  till  they  drew  near  the 
house  or  tent  used  as  a  club-room.  As  they  approached  it, 
the  dog  fell  behind  his  master,  and  when  the  latter  at  the 
very  door  turned  round  to  call  the  animal  to  him,  the  other 
turned  and  tied  with  the  speed  of  the  wind.  N o  coaxing 
and  no  threats  ever  afterward  could  make  the  ill-used  dog 
come  near  the  spot  where  high-born,  educated,  and  brave 
gentlemen  had  once  reduced  him  to  their  own  level  of 
physical  helplessness, — but  not  to  their  own  depth  of  moral 
degradation. 

We  know  that  it  is  becoming  fashionable  in  our  midst, 
to  set  aside  the  salutary  severity  with  which  the  Church  in 
former  times  visited  both  the  man  who  died  by  his  own  hand 
and  the  man  who  drank  himself  to  death.  With  the  wan¬ 
ing  of  true  religion,  charity,  dissevered  from  truth,  becomes 
cruelty,  and  our  caricature  of  mercy  in  her  maudlin  minis¬ 
trations,  becomes  the  worst  of  unkindness.  True  charity 
loves  as  God  loves,  the  soul  before  the  body,  and  in  its  work 
of  saving  the  former  it  also  saves  and  sanctifies  the  latter. 

Our  modern  doctors  and  moralists  will  have  it  that  the 
despair  of  the  suicide, — the  supreme  wrong  done  to  the 
Infinite  Mercy  and  exhaustless  patience  of  the  Creator,  by 
renouncing  it  and  putting  one’s  self  beyond  its  pale, — is 


HABITUAL  DRUNKENNESS  NOT  INSANITY. 


171 


insanity,  rendering  the  doer  of  the  most  dreadful  of  deeds 
irresponsible  for  his  act.  They  will  have  it,  too, — these 
modern  blind  leaders  of  the  blind, — that  drunkenness  is 
disease,  that  habitual  drunkenness  is  chronic  disease,  by 
which  the  brain  becomes  so  weakened,  that  the  will  loses 
all  control  over  its  own  inclinations. 

Oh,  we  do  not  deny  that  just  as  successive  acts  of  vir¬ 
tuous  self-denial  impart  to  the  will  a  continual  increase  of 
strength  and  generosity,  even  so  a  long  series  of  guilty  in¬ 
dulgences  weaken  it  in  the  like  proportion.  We  know  that 
habitual  generosity  and  self-sacrifice,  aided  as  they  are  by 
the  ever-present  grace  of  God,  will  end  by  making  the 
Christian  man  a  Godlike  being  in  his  strength  to  overcome 
every  obstacle  to  virtue,  and  in  the  supernatural  facility 
with  which  he  performs  the  most  heroic  deeds  of  holiness. 

Knowing,  also,  what  the  wise  pagans  proclaimed  long 
ages  before  Christ, — that  vicious  acts  breed  vicious  habits, 
and  that  habitual  vice  is  the  worst  form  of  slavery, — we 
must  only  recall  to  parents  and  to  all  who  have  the  train¬ 
ing  of  youth,  this  fundamental  truth  in  practical  morality  : 
The  man  who  commits  one  sinful  act  knows,  that  by  so 
doing  he  only  disposes  himself  the  more  readily  to  commit 
a  second,  and  that  the  second  renders  more  easy  still  the 
committing  of  a  third, — every  successive  fall  from  the  level 
road  of  virtue  increasing,  almost  immeasurably,  our  down¬ 
ward  velocity.  The  drunkard’s  guilt,  in  his  very  first  sin, 
consists,  not  only  in  his  offending  against  God  and  himself 
by  transgressing  the  Divine  Law  and  the  law  of  his  own 
nature,  but  in  acquiescing  in  the  immediate  and  necessary 
consequences  of  his  sin,  such  as  the  inability  to  discharge 
obligations  and  duties  incumbent  on  him,  the  scandal  given 
to  others  by  his  evil  example,  and  this  very  rendering  of  a 
second  act  of  drunkenness  both  more  easy  and  probable. 

The  child  should  be  warned  against  the  formation  of  evil 
habits,  and  taught  that  evil  habit  is  a  chain  of  adamant  by 
which  the  soul  fetters  its  own  freedom, — the  most  glorious 
and  sacred  of  all  the  gifts  of  the  Creator.  This  weakening, 
fettering,  and  destroying  of  the  soul’s  innate  freedom — its 


172 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


most  Godlike  attribute  and  power, — is  known,  or  ought  to 
be  known  to  every  human  soul  in  possession  of  its  reason, 
as  the  inevitable  consequence  of  evil  acts  become  evil  habits. 
This  is  the  very  nature  of  sin.  Most  true,  therefore,  in  the 
estimation  of  all  ages,  is  the  affirmation  of  the  great  poet : 

“  All  wickedness  is  weakness.” 

The  first  act  of  wickedness  weakens  the  will,  takes  away 
a  part  of  its  power  for  good  ;  every  succeeding  act  adds,  to 
the  weakness  in  an  increasing  ratio.  This  weakness,  this 
wickedness  is  “shameful,” — shameful  in  the  eyes  of  God 
and  men.  The  man  who  consents  to  the  first  sin,  the'  first 
weakness,  does  a  “wicked”  thing,  precisely  because  it  is 
destructive  of  his  own  strength,  his  own  dignity,  his  own 
happiness  and  that  of  others,  as  well  as  injurious  to  the 
most  high  God.  Just  as  it  is  no  excuse  of  a  man’s  folly, 
that,  without  any  justifiable  reason,  he  has  again  and  again 
and  again  gone  into  a  leprosy  or  a  yellow-fever  hospital  till 
he  has  caright  the  plague  in  its  worst  form,  although  warned 
by  physicians  and  others  of  the  consequences  of  his  fool¬ 
hardiness  ;  even  so  it  is  with  the  drunkard.  He  has  been 
warned  against  the  first  act  of  intoxication,  and  the  second, 
and  the  third,  till  the  habit  grew  on  him  and  possessed  his 
soul  as  with  the  virulence  of  the  most  deadly  disease. 

“  That  plea  therefore 

With  God  or  man  will  gain  thee  no  remission.” 

And,  where  a  man  is  at  the  head  of  a  family,  with  a  lov¬ 
ing  wife  to  care  for  and  to  cherish,  with  children  to  train, 
like  the  young  of  the  eagle,  to  the  loftiest  flights  of  excel¬ 
lence,  and  the  pursuit  of  virtues  that  lift  the  soul  far  above 
earth  and  its  groveling  satisfactions, — the  contracting  of 
habits  of  intemperance,  or  the  exposing  himself  to  contract 
them,  is  fearful  guilt,  and  most  awful  responsibility  at  His 
judgment-seat  who  will  hold  the  husband  and  father  ac¬ 
countable  for  the  life,  the  honor,  the  happiness,  the  souls 
of  wife  and  children. 

And  the  higher  a  man  is  born,  the  more  richly  he  is 


A  TERRIBLE  EXAMPLE. 


173 


endowed  with  talents,  worldly  wealth,  and  great  opportu¬ 
nities,  the  more  favored  he  is  by  education  and  position — 
and  the  more  terrible  is  that  responsibility ;  because  all 
these  are  powers  given  him  to  make  his  home-life  blissful, 
and  his  home  the  center  from  which  his  own  power  for  all 
good  may  radiate  far  and  wide. 

The  American  public  has  been  obliged  to  recall,  in  the 
recent  death  of  a  most  estimable  lady  in  New  England,  not 
only  that  she  was  destined  to  become  the  bride  of  the  most 
gifted  poetical  genius  -that  ever  shed  luster  on  American 
letters,  when,  at  the  age  of  thirty-nine,  he  was  found  dead 
intoxicated  with  a  broken  bottle  by  his  side  ;  but  that  his 
career  of  profligacy  had  already  been  a  long  one, — dating 
from  his  very  boyhood.  Only  two  years  before  his  death, 
he  buried  his  lovely  wife,  the  Annabel  Lee  of  his  well- 
known  song, — buried  her  after  having  broken  her  heart, 
and  dragged  her  through  the  mire  of  his  own  degradation 
and  the  extreme  poverty  brought  on  by  incessant  debauch. 

Most  touching  and  most  instructive  it  is  to  recall  a  few 
passages  of  that  gifted  and  guilty  man’s  writings,  in  which 
he  records  both  his  love  for  this  innocent  young  thing  and 
his  remorse  for  the  misery  caused  her. 

“  And  this  maiden  she  lived  with  no  other  thought 
Than  to  love  and  be  loved  by  me. 

I  was  a  child  and  she  was  a  child, 

.  In  this  kingdom  by  the  sea 

But  we  loved  with  a  love  that  was  more  than  love, 

I  and  my  Annabel  Lee  ; 

With  a  love  that  the  winged  seraphs  of  heaven 
Coveted  her  and  me.”  , 

At  the  very  time  when  poverty  and  its  saddest  privations 
were  preying  upon  the  homeless  wife,  and  nothing  seemed 
able  to  reclaim  the  wretched  husband  from  the  degrading 
passion  that  preyed  on  his  life  and  his  honor,  he  wrote  the 
poem  of  “The  Raven,” — one  of  the  masterpieces  of  Ameri¬ 
can  poetry.  The  “  Raven”  was  that  same  dreadful  passion 
whose  fatal  hold  upon  his  will  left  him  neither  power  of 
resistance  nor  hope  of  eternal  salvation. 


174 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


Listen  to  the  awful  utterances  of  that  immortal  verse, 
every  word  and  line  of  which  seems  to  have  been  written 
under  the  inspiration  of  that  demon-haunted  fever  which 
ever  attends  upon  alcoholic  excess. 

“  This  I  sat  engaged  in  guessing,  but  no  syllable  expressing 
To  the  fowl  whose  fiery  eyes  now  burned  into  my  bosom’s  core ; 

This  and  more  I  sat  divining,  with  my  head  at  ease  reclining 
On  the  cushion’s  velvet  lining  that  the  lamp-light  gloated  o’er, 

But  whose  velvet  violet  lining  with  the  lamp-light  gloating  o’er. 

She  shall  press,  ah,  nevermore  ! 

‘‘Then  metliought  the  air  grew  denser,  perfumed  from  an  unseen  censer, 
Swung  by  seraphim  whose  footfalls  tinkled  on  the  tufted  floor. 

‘  Wretch,’  I  cried,  ‘  thy  God  hath  lent  thee — by  these  angels  he  hath  sent  thee 
Respite, — respite  and  nepenthe,  from  thy  memories  of  Lenore  ! 

Quaff,  oh  quaff  this  kind  nepenthe,  and  forget  this  lost  Lenore  !  ’ 

Quoth  the  Raven,  ‘  Nevermore  !’ 

“  ‘Prophet,’  said  I,  ‘  thing  of  evil  ! — prophet  still,  if  bird  or  devil  ! — 

Whether  tempter  sent,  or  whether  tempest  tossed  thee  here  ashore, — 
Desolate,  yet  all  undaunted,  on  this  desert  land  enchanted — 

On  this  home  by  Horror  haunted, — tell  me  truly,  I  implore — 

Is  there — is  there  balm  in  Gilead? — tell  me,  tell  me,  I  implore  !’ 

Quoth  the  Raven,  ‘  Nevermore.’ 

“  ‘  Be  that  word  our  sign  of  parting,  bird  or  fiend  !  ’  I  shrieked,  upstarting — 

‘  Get  thee  back  into  the  tempest  and  the  Night’s  Plutonian  shore  ! 

Leave  no  black  plume  as  a  token  of  that  lie  thy  soul  hath  spoken  ! 

Leave  my  loneliness  unbroken  !  quit  the  bust  above  my  door  ! 

Take  thy  beak  from  out  my  heart  *  and  take  thy  form  from  off  my  door  !’ 

Quoth  the  Raven,  ‘Nevermore.’ 

“And  the  Raven  never  flitting,  still  is  sitting,  still  is  sitting 
On  the  pallid  bust  of  Pallas,  just  above  my  chamber  door  ; 

And  his  eyes  have  all  the  seeming  of  a  demon’s  that  is  dreaming, 

And  the  lamp-light  o’er  him  streaming  throws  his  shadow  on  the  floor  ; 

And  my  soul  from  out  that  shadow  that  lies  floating  on  the  floor 

Shall  be  lifted — nevermore  !  ” 

To  the  inveterate  drunkard  bound,  like  Prometheus,  to 
his  habits  with  chains  which  no  effort  of  his  can  break,  the 
remorse  preying  on  his  heart  is  worse  than  the  beak  of  the 
vulture  tearing  the  entrails  of  living  man.  And  in  that  ter- 


*  The  italics  are  our  own. 


EDGAR  POE’S  “RAVEN.” 


175 


rible  remorse  the  most  intolerable  pang  does  not  come  from 
the  constant  remembrance  of  what  the  drunkard  “might 
have  been”  and  of  what  “he  has  brought  himself  to,” — 
so  much  as  from  the  torturing  knowledge  of  the  shame, 
ruin,  misery,  he  has  brought  upon  his  dear  ones. 

The  young  wife  who  chose  him  to  till  her  heart  and  her 
life  with  happiness,  because  she  believed  him  to  be  what 
she  was  herself, — spotless,  manly,  true,  strong  to  support 
her  through  life,  devoted  to  duty,  to  home,  to  God,  and  to 
all  the  sacred  and  manifold  obligations  of  husband,  father, 
and  Christian, — knew  him  not.  And  she  awakened  from  her 
dream  of  innocent  love  and  hope,  to  find  the  husband  of  her 
choice  to  be,  like  one  of  those  horrid  monsters  of  Scandina¬ 
vian  fiction, — a  man  having  to  all  appearance  the  stature, 
the  strength,  and  the  beauty  of  the  gods,  but  who  was  only 
half  of  an  empty  shell,  a  mask  of  humanity  without  heart, 
or  flesh,  or  blood,  or  feeling. 

We  have  seen  many  of  these  young  wives  entrapped  into 
marriage  with  such  half-men  by  some  strange  error  of  their 
own  heart  and  judgment,  by  the  ignorance  and  neglect  of 
their  own  parents,  or  by  some  unworthy  artifice  of  the  half¬ 
man  and  his  parents  ; — and  they  struggled  on  for  years  and 
years  to  conceal  from  every  eye,  even  that  of  their  nearest 
relatives,  the  dreadful  secret  of  their  own  misery,  rising 
beneath  the  load  of  their  heavy  cross  to  sublime  heights 
of  heroic  self-sacrifice  ;  arming  themselves  with  invincible 
patience,  meekness,  and  forbearance,  in  order  to  reform 
their  companion,  and  to  enlist  in  the  work  of  reformation 
the  good  God  and  his  angels.  Their  union  reminded  one  of 
the  cruel  method  devised  by  the  abominable  tyrant  Mezen- 
tius,'*  who  bound  the  living  to  the  putrid  dead,  that  they 
might  thus  slowly  perish  of  horror  and  loathing. 

It  is  not,  however,  the  torture  of  soul  arising  from  the 

*  Mortua  quin  etiam  jungebat  corpora  vivis, 

Componens  manibusque  manus,  atque  oribus  ora, 

( Tormenti  genus )  et  sanie  taboque  fluentes 
Complexu  in  misero  longa  sic  morte  necabat. 

Eneid,  viii.  485-488. 


176 


TRUE  MEN-  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


deception  practiced  on  herself  and  the  agony  of  having  thus 
to  live  bound  forever  to  one  loathsome  to  every  interior  and 
exterior  sense,  that  is  the  greatest  suffering  of  the  wife  and 
mother ;  it  is  to  see  her  home  made  desolate,  her  children 
worse  than  orphaned,  every  means  of  sustenance  sacrificed 
piecemeal  to  the  unhallowed  appetite  of  him  who  should 
be  the  sustainer  and  provider  of  the  home.  This  is  the 
death-like  shadow  which  falls  on  the  home  of  the  drunk¬ 
ard,  frequently  from  the  very  first  days  of  his  married  life  ; 
this  is  the  gloom,  worse  than  that  of  the  Valley  of  Death, 
amid  which  his  bride  finds  herself  condemned  to  dwell,  — 
the  darkness  and  the  despair  increasing  day  by  day,  as  the 
husband  pursues  his  downward  course.  This  is  the  raven 
that 

“Still  is  sitting,  still  is  sitting/’ 

above  the  door  of  the  home  which  wifely  devotion  and 
motherly  love  are  vainly  laboring  to  brighten  ;  this  is  the 
dark  form  of  evil  boding  which  haunts  her  waking  and  her 
sleeping  hours  like  a  living  horror.  Its  “  eyes  have  all  the 
seeming  of  a  demon’s,”  its  cruel  beak  is  ever  tearing  her 
heart,  and  its  prophetic  voice, — as  month  of  misery  suc¬ 
ceeds  to  month,  and  as  the  years  come  and  go  without 
alleviation  to  her  intolerable  burthen,  ever  seems  to  utter 
in  her  ears  the  fatal  “  Nevermore!”  No, — there  is  never 
to  be  for  her  sunshine  around  the  hearth,  joy  in  her  chil¬ 
dren’s  endearments,  assurance  that  the  father’s  name  will 
not  blight  the  prospects  of  her  daughters,  or  that  his  vice 
will  not  cling  like  inherited  leprosy  to  her  sons. 

We  men  are  but  too  apt  to  commiserate  the  lot  of  the 
drunkard  even  in  the  last  stages  of  his  reckless  and  selfish 
course,  when  irreparable  ruin  has  fallen  on  his  home,  and 
irremediable  disease  on  himself.  We  say  that  “it  is  a 
pity  ;  the  man  is  so  generous,  so  warm-hearted,  gifted  with 
such  rare  qualities  of  soul ;  so  lovable,  when  he  is  himself, 
so  sociable,”  etc.,  etc.,  etc.  Priests  and  others  who  have 
only  seen  him  outside  of  his  family  circle,  and  when  his 
fits  of  maudlin  repentance  were  on  him, — solely,  or  princi¬ 
pally  considered  the  wreck  before  them,  beholding  only  in 


THE  DRUNKARD'S  WIFE  MOST  TO  BE  PITIED.  177 

the  man  the  qualities  or  gifts  which  he  had  neglected  or 
perverted.  We  do  not  deny  either  that  this  infirmity  at¬ 
taches  itself  most  frequently  to  the  man  of  lively  fancy, 
facile  talent,  warm  heart,  and  open  hand,  or  that, — when 
degraded  and  ruined  by  the  misuse  of  his  gifts, — the  poor 
prodigal  is  still  deserving  of  helpful  sympathy  and  charita¬ 
ble  compassion.  It  is  not  to  be  forgotten,  however,  that 
the  Prodigal  Son  in  the  Gospel  narrative,  was  unmarried, 
and  that  his  debaucheries  had  not  ruined  a  home,  broken 
a  wife’s  heart,  and  brought  children  to  disgrace  and  beg¬ 
gary. 

As  we  are  holding  up  the  mirror  of  truth  to  men,  we 
must  remind  them  of  what  the  wife  is  suffering  in  her  cold, 
cheerlesss,  darkened  home,  while  the  self-ruined  husband 
is  parading  his  native  generosity  of  disposition,  and  solicit¬ 
ing  the  sympathy  of  his  old  acquaintance,  as  if  he  were  the 
victim  of  other  people’ s  injustice,  instead  of  being  the  de¬ 
stroyer  of  his  home,  his  family,  and  himself. 

You,  dear  reader,  who  know  with  what  a  priestly  charity 
and  tenderness  we  are  anxious  to  touch  on  all  these  details, 
will  agree  with  us  that  these  “  unselfish  ”  and  warm-hearted 
drunkards,  are  in  their  own  wretched  homes  and  toward 
their  families,  the  most  cruelly  selfish,  cold-hearted,  and 
unfeeling  of  husbands  and  parents.  Is  it  not  true,  that  in 
looking  upon  that  sad  wreck  of  humanity  we  call  an  habi¬ 
tual  and  irreclaimable  dunkard,  we  give  all  our  pity  to  the 
fallen  man  before  us,  and  forget  the  wife  and  the  children 
at  home,  whom  his  merciless  and  heartless  self-indulgence 
reduced  to  want  and  starvation  ? 

Have  you  not  heard  of,  have  you  not  seen,  these  men 
living  for  years  upon  the  earnings  of  wives,  who  had  not 
been  brought  up  to  such  labor  I  Have  we  not  known  these 
men  to  steal  and  drink  the  money  so  hardly,  so  heroically 
earned  by  their  delicate  and  drooping  companions  for  the 
support  of  their  suffering  children,  to  keep  a  roof  above 
them,  and  scant  fire  on  the  hearth,  and  scant  bread  on  the 
board? — Yes,  we  have  known  these  “ warm-hearted,”  un¬ 
principled  brutes  to  steal  from  the  wife  a  whole  week’s 


178 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


earnings,  and  spend  the  whole  of  it  in  the  neighboring  tav¬ 
ern,  treating  their  vile  companions  all  round  to  cup  after 
cup  of  the  drugged  alcohol, — till  not  one  penny  was  left  to 
get  bread  for  the  hungry  children  on  the  Sunday  morning  ? 
And,  viler  than  this  vile  husband  and  his  peers  of  the  bot¬ 
tle,  viler  even  than  words  can  express,  the  tavern-keeper 
dealt  out  cup  after  cup  of  the  murderous  beverage  so  long 
as  the  money  lasted,  fully  aware  the  while  of  the  sore,  sore 
need  of  the  hapless  wife  and  hungry  children  at  home  ! 

Unselfishness,  indeed  !  Have  we  priests  not  known  more 
than  one  of  these  same  men,  praised  by  their  casual  ac¬ 
quaintances  for  their  amiability  and  open-handed  liberality, 
to  be  drunk  daily  while  a  mother  or  wife  lay  on  her  death¬ 
bed,  drunk  while  she  lay  in  her  cotfin,  and  to  have  come  stag¬ 
gering  drunk  to  her  grave  ?  Have  we  not  known  wretches 
so  utterly  reckless  of  all  sense  of  honor  and  shame  that 
they  would  have  stolen  the  marriage  ring  off  the  finger 
of  mother  or  wife  in  the  grave  to  buy  one  last  glass  of 
alcohol  ? 

Talk  of  unselfishness !  Have  we  not  seen  these  utterly 
selfish  and  utterly  unmanly  men  forget  all  the  most  sacred 
feelings  and  imperious  duties  of  the  husband  and  the  pa¬ 
rent,  and  indulge  in  their  wildest  freaks  of  intoxication, 
when  their  sick  wives  most  needed  tenderest  nursing  and 
lay  at  death’s  door  for  many  days  in  succession?  Yet 
these  abominable  brutes  would  return  from  their  long 
nightly  or  daily  debauch  to  enter  perforce  the  sick-room 
and  imperil  the  helpless  sufferer’s  life  by  noisy  demonstra¬ 
tions  of  affection  or  bursts  of  passionate  abuse. 

The  fiend,  that  seems  to  possess  the  souls  of  men  who 
indulge  in  the  dreadful  poisons  invented  by  modern  dis¬ 
tillers,  seems  to  transform  his  slaves  into  fiends  after  his 
own  image  and  likeness, — impelling  them  to  show  a  devilish 
ingenuity  in  torturing  the  poor,  patient,  overtaxed  woman 
who  has  to  bear  the  double  curse  of  their  name  and  their 
companionship.  .  .  .  Shall  we  continue  on  this  subject  ? 

O  men,  O  true  men,  who  read  this  page,  forgive  the 
writer  for  penning  truths  so  disgraceful  to  human  nature, 


THE  RADICAL  REMEDY  FOR  INTEMPERANCE.  179 


so  painful  to  the  reader,  and  so  unspeakably  painful  to  the 
writer  himself.  If,  in  holding  up  the  mirror  to  you,  such 
diabolical  forms  appear,  where  the  divine  features  of  the 
true  Christian  man, — the  child  of  God  in  life  and  manners, 
— should  alone  appear, — let  the  fearful  apparition  only 
stimulate  us  all  to  a  salutary  hatred  of  the  besetting  vice 
of  our  age. 

Where  is  the  radical  remedy?  it  may  be  asked.  We 
know  but  one.  The  rearing  of  our  boys  in  such  ignorance 
and  such  horror  of  intemperance,  that  they  may  be  like  holy 
Samuel,  or  Elias,  or  John  the  Baptist,  or  the  thrice-blessed 
descendants  of  Jonadab  the  Son  of  Rechab,  JNazarites 
from  their  birth,  never  tasting  wine  or  strong  drink  of 
any  kind.  Oh !  if  this  book  could  bring  forth  such  fruit 
in  every  family  in  which  it  is  read,  how  gladly  would  the 
writer  sing  his  Nunc  dimittts  !  * 

There  is,  however,  one  class  of  men  to  whom,  in  particular, 
we  address  this  concluding  paragraph, — those,  namely,  who 
are  engaged  in  the  traffic  of  intoxicating  drinks.  We 
remind  distillers,  that,  while  we  should  under  no  circum¬ 
stances  interfere  with  the  necessities  and  the  liberty  of 
lawful  trade,  there  are  certain  modern  expedients  in  their 
special  business,  which  are  alike  beyond  the  necessities  of 
lawful  trade,  and  a  criminal  violation  of  the  freedom  it 
should  enjoy.  It  is  not  only  the  distilling  of  alcoholic 
liquors  from  substances  which  render  the  liquor  distilled 
essentially  deleterious,  but  the  drugging  of  pure  alcohol  so 
as  to  make  it  injurious  or  poisonous,  or  the  selling  for  wine 
or  for  any  other  like  well-known  drink,  what  is  a  dangerous 
or  deadly  counterfeit,  skillfully  disguised. 

But  it  is  to  tavern-keepers,  and  all  who  are  engaged  in 
retailing  alcoholic  stimulants,  that  our  words  would  fain 
appeal  with  all  the  earnestness  and  charity  of  a  priestly 
heart. 


*  “  Now  dost  thou  dismiss  Thy  servant,  0  Lord, 

According  to  Thy  Word,  in  peace, 

Because  my  eyes  have  seen  Thy  salvation.” 

St.  Luke.,  ii.  29,  30. 


180 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


We  have  seen  fortunes, — great  fortunes,  even, — made  in 
this  dangerous  business,  and  made,  too,  by  men  who  did  not 
care  what  they  sold  or  to  whom  they  sold, — provided  they 
found  and  kept  their  customers  till  these  had  given  the  last 
penny  they  had,  and  taken  much  more  than  they  could 
bear  of  intoxicating  drink.  We  have  seen  these  men  flou¬ 
rishing  suddenly,  their  children  springing  up  around  them 
like  these  trees  of  rapid  growth,  that  take  root  in  an  un¬ 
wholesome  Southern  swamp,  live  a  short  and  brilliant  sea¬ 
son,  and  pine  away  as  suddenly  as  they  had  grown  up, 
without  leaving  healthy  fruit  or  a  lasting  progeny  behind. 

The  blessing  of  God  does  not  come  with  money  made  in 
violation  of  His  most  binding  laws  ;  money  so  made  is  also 
burthened  with  the  curse  of  widowed  mothers,  of  heart¬ 
broken  wives,  of  children  rendered  homeless,  penniless,  and 
parentless.  And  these  terrible  curses  will  melt  the  money 
in  the  hands  of  those  who  inherit  it,  and  often  consume  the 
possessors  themselves. 

Only  think  of  it.  Here  is  a  man  calling  himself  a  Chris¬ 
tian,  a  Catholic,  having  a  family  to  rear,  and  wishing  to 
educate  them  according  to  the  dictates  of  the  faith  of  their 
baptism.  He  knows  that  it  is  a  deadly  sin  to  allow  any 
person  to  become  intoxicated  in  his  house  ;  and  yet,  because 
his  customers  may  get  as  much  to  drink  as  they  please  at 
the  next  tavern,  he  thinks  they  may  as  well  get  drunk  in 
his  house.  “  If  I  do  not  give  them  as  much  liquor  as  they 
want,” — he  reasons, — “they  will  get  it  elsewhere  ;  and  my 
customers  will  leave  me.”  So,  he  refuses  no  one,  and  gives 
to  any  extent. 

This  is  not  the  worst.  There  is  among  these  customers 
one  man,  the  father  of  a  family,  who  is  an  habitual  drunk¬ 
ard,  who  is, — to  the  tavern-keeper’s  certain  knowledge, — 
drinking  his  wife  and  children  out  of  house  and  home  ;  and 
who,  besides,  is  leading  a  life  of  intolerable  disgrace  and 
misery.  He  has  been  warned  by  the  neighbors  of  the  ruin 
this  man  is  bringing  on  his  dear  ones  ; — he  has  been  warned 
again  and  again  by  the  drunkard’s  unfortunate  wife.  And 
yet  he  allows  that  recreant  husband  and  father  to  remain 


EARNEST  APPEAL  TO  TAVERN-KEEPERS. 


181 


liis  customer,  to  drink  and  get  drunk  in  liis  house,  day  after 
day,  for  weeks,  for  months,  for  years, — till  the  man’s  ruin 
and  that  of  his  family  are  consummated  !  Do  you  think, — 
can  any  one  think, — that  this  conduct  on  your  part  will 
meet  with  God’ s  approval  ?  that  it  will  bring  a  blessing  on 
you  and  yours?  or  that  it  can  bring  anything  but  God’s 
withering  curse,  blighting  yourself,  your  ill-gotten  fortune, 
and  your  children  after  you  ? 


CHAPTER  X. 


THE  FATHER. 

Love  from  its  awful  throne  of  patient  power 
Folds  over  the  world  its  healing  wings. 


Ho  more  truthful  and  beautiful  conception  of  the  pater¬ 
nal  office  in  a  Christian  household,  can  be  conveyed  than 
by  saying  that  Fatherhood  is  Love,  all-powerful  Love,  that 
it  should  occupy  an  44  awful  throne  ” — one  surrounded  with 
affection  and  veneration,  in  the  home ;  that  its  authority 
should  be  at  once  a  sacred  and  a  4  4  patient 5  ’  power ;  and 
that  its  right  exercise  must  result  in  healing,  at  their  very 
roots,  the  inveterate  sores  of  which  society  complains. 

Yes, — fatherly  love  and  authority,  acting  in  the  name 
and  place  of  God,  would  be  to  that  sick,  perverse,  and  over¬ 
grown  child, — the  youth  of  the  nineteenth  century, — a  ‘ 4  pa¬ 
tient  power  ’  ’  which 


“Folds  over  tlie  world  its  healing  wings.” 

We  need  in  the  Home,  as  it  is  now  assailed  by  rampant 
errors,  subversive  of  God,  of  authority,  of  order,  reverence, 
and  love, — the  conviction  firmly  seated  both  in  the  soul  of 
the  parent  and  in  that  of  his  offspring,  — that  a  father  is  in 
God’s  place  ;  and  that,  just  as  he  must  make  it  almost  the 
one  chief  aim  of  his  life  to  have  his  children  so  consider 
and  reverence  him,  even  so  must  he  do  himself  his  utmost 
to  be  to  his  dear  ones  the  living  image  of  God’ s  love  and 
patient  power. 

As  the  great  secret  of  establishing  over  the  minds  and 

182 


HUMAN  FATHERHOOD  TO  COPT  THE  DIVINE.  183 

hearts  of  all  within  the  household  the  lovingly  accepted  in¬ 
fluence  of  his  august  power,  lies  in  being  most  like  to  God 
in  word  and  deed,  so  fathers  will  bear  with  us  while  we  re¬ 
quest  them  to  read  and  ponder  well  one  or  two  passages 
from  men,  who  have  been  most  truly  what  we  wish  to  make 
our  readers, — kings  over  the  minds  and  hearts  of  those  who 
called  them  “  Father.”  We  shall  thereby  show  all  the  more 
easily  and  convincingly  what  is  the  nature,  and  what  the 
extent  of  a  father’s  authority. 

In  what  Fathers  are  to  Imitate  God. 

St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  called  by  the  veneration  of  Catholic 
ages  “  the  Angelic  Teacher,”  -  says  that  Christian  men  are 
bound  to  imitate  God,  to  copy  in  their  conduct  what  is  re¬ 
vealed  to  us  of  His  outward  manners, — His  truthfulness, 
wisdom,  meekness,  patience,  justice,  liberality,  mercy, — 
and  so  emulate  all  the  other  divine  attributes  in  so  far  as  a 
created  being  can  follow  and  imitate  the  Creator. 

Another,  and  an  older  saint,  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  teach¬ 
ing  a  Pope  his  duties, — in  an  age  when  the  Pope  was  re¬ 
vered  as  the  Common  Father  of  Christendom, — thus  ad¬ 
dresses  him  : 

“What  is  God?  The  all-powerful  will,  the  most  loving 
power,  the  everlasting  light,  the  unchanging  reason,  the 
supreme  felicity  ; — who  createth  souls  to  make  them  par¬ 
takers  of  His  own  nature ;  .  .  .  who  inflameth  them  with 
zeal  for  His  service,  and  maketh  their  zeal  fruitful  by  His 
grace  ;  .  .  .  who  imparteth  the  strength  to  practice  God¬ 
like  virtue  ;  .  .  .  who  filleth  them  with  His  Godhead  to 
make  their  bliss  perfect ;  .  .  .  and  who  rendereth  their 
supreme  felicity  unchangeable  by  making  it  eternal  like 
Himself.”  * 

What  more  magnificent  than  this  faculty  of  becoming 
within  your  homes  the  living  image  of  this  Goodness  which 
ever  yearns  to  pour  out  on  its  intelligent  creatures  an  ever 
fuller  and  fuller  measure  of  its  exhaustless  wealth  of  love, 


*  Lib,  y.  de  Consideratione,  c.  ii. 


184 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


till,  with  the  dawn  of  eternity,  it  can  overflow  all  bound¬ 
aries,  like  the  victorious  ocean-tide,  and  encompass  the 
loved  object  within  its  rapturous  depths  \  Cannot  a  true 
father  become  more  loving,  more  generous,  more  devoted 
every  day  % 

Let  us  show  how  this  divine  ideal  should  be  one  of  prac¬ 
tical  daily  and  hourly  life,  to  every  man  who  holds  toward 
others  the  sacred  relation  of  father, — how  it  is  imitable  by 
him  in  every  one  of  his  actions, — in  the  discharge  of  every 
possible  duty  inside  and  outside  his  home. 

When  men  of  the  world, — high  or  low, — are  told  to  take 
God  as  their  ideal  or  pattern,  they  are  apt  to  think  and  say 
that  the  perfection  demanded  is  too  high  above  them,  and 
impossible  of  attainment.  “  You  might  as  well,”  they  are 
tempted  to  say,  ‘  ‘  tell  us  to  understand  what  is  the  nature 
of  the  fire  which  burns  eternally  in  the  bosom  of  the  Sun 
or  of  the  light  which  it  sheds  through  the  universe.  We 
have  near  our  hand  means  of  procuring  heat  and  light  for 
our  dwellings  without  being  at  the  trouble  of  studying  the 
nature  of  the  solar  atmosphere  or  of  the  mighty  globe  it 
surrounds.” 

The  Divine  Exemplar  walking  in  the  ways  of  Men . 

« 

True.  But  our  “  Sun  of  righteousness”  has  come  down 
to  us,  veiling  his  light  and  tempering  the  heat  of  his  near 
presence,  that  our  weak  senses  might  bear  this  very  near¬ 
ness.  We  have  seen  Him, — not  as  the  glorious  Being  who 
dwells  above  in  light  unapproachable  and  manifests  His  un¬ 
clouded  essence  and  perfections  to  the  gaze  of  the  Blessed, 
— but  as  a  child  growing  from  helpless  infancy  through 
boyhood  and  youth, — a  true  man  in  all  his  ways  and  affec¬ 
tions  and  virtues,  as  well  as  very  God  in  the  powers  which 
he  wielded  to  confirm  his  mission  and  his  teaching. 

It  is  these  sweet  human  virtues,  of  every-day  life,  especi¬ 
ally  as  practiced  within  the  lowly  home  of  his  mother, — that 
we  would  have  parents  study  and  acquire  by  practice.  Then 
only  could  they  teach  and  enjoin  them  on  their  dear  ones. 


FATHERLY  LOVE,  ALL-EMBRACING . 


185 


To  fathers  in  the  household  (and,  in  their  own  measure, 
to  all  persons  having  authority  over  others)  is  the  divine 
exhortation  addressed,  “Be  you  .  .  .  jDerfect  as  also  your 
Heavenly  Father  is  perfect.”  * 

I.  Fatherly  Lore  should  be  all-embracing ,  like  God's. 

Let  yours  be  perfect  love  !  And  how  few  there  are  among 
the  wisest,  the  most  learned,  the  most  experienced  of  good 
fathers  even,  who  understand  what  that  supernatural  cha¬ 
rity,  that  perfect,  all-embracing,  all-enduring  love  is,  of 
which  He  who  is  Father  over  us  all  affords  us  the  sweet 
and  wonderful  model ! 

It  embraces  His  Enemies  among  the  Heathen. 

To  those  among  His  human  creatures  who  are  most  for¬ 
getful  of  Himself,  most  bitterly  hostile  toward  the  very 
notion  of  a  Godhead, — who  blaspheme  Him  by  their  words 
and  their  writings,  who  make  of  their  whole  lives  one  long- 
act  of  rebellion  and  defiance  of  His  authority,  who  are  upon 
earth  the  embodiment  of  irreligion,  impiety,  vice,  and  wick¬ 
edness, — see  how  good,  how  patient,  that  Fatherly  Love 
is !  Hot  one  of  His  laws  is  suspended  with  respect  to  the 
evil-doer,  not  one  of  the  manifold  provisions  of  nature 
ordained  by  that  Almighty  Love  is  withdrawn.  The  sun 
still  rises  over  him,  despite  the  countless  days  so  horribly 
misspent,  and  the  sweet  repose  of  night  will  come  again 
after  a  day  of  sin,  and  God’ s  angels  will  guard  from  danger 
the  life  of  the  enemy  of  God,  as  unvarying  and  patient  in 
their  watchfulness,  as  are  the  stars  which  look  down  from 
the  firmament  on  the  sleep  of  the  wicked  and  the  repose  of 
the  just. 

The  great  sun  in  the  heavens  continues,  day  after  day 
and  year  after  year,  to  dispense  its  light  and  vital  warmth 
to  the  man  whose  whole  existence  is  an  outrage  to  the  Crea¬ 
tor  ;  the  air  he  breathes  loses  nothing  of  its  wholesomeness, 


*  St.  Matthew,  v.  48. 


186 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


the  heavens  above  his  head  and  the  earth  and  ocean  aronnd 
him,  are  unchanged  for  him  in  their  magnificence  and  their 
beauty. 

It  embraces  Bad  Christians. 

There  is,  however,  another  order  of  things  in  which  the 
unspeakable  patience  and  tenderness  of  that  same  Fatherly 
Love  is  displayed  to  all  its  children  without  exception. 
Take  the  “  Household  of  the  Faith,” — that  most  wonderful 
creation  and  world  of  all  in  which  man  knows  himself  to 
bear  toward  his  Maker  the  real  relation  of  son, — not  in  that 
vague  and  remote  sense  in  which  every  being  that  owes  its 
existence  to  the  Almighty  may  be  said  to  be  his  child, — 
but  in  that  lofty  and  sublime  sense  in  which  all  who  are 
born  by  baptism  of  the  blood  of  the  Only-Begotten  Son,  are 
most  truly  partakers  of  his  sonsliip.  There  are  in  the  house 
of  the  Father  very  many  who  disgrace  their  sonship,  who 
live  a  life  unworthy  of  the  unbaptised  and  the  heathen, 
who  are  most  keenly  conscious  of  their  own  unworthiness, 
and  deplore,  while  they  persist  in  it,  the  monstrous  incon¬ 
sistency  of  leading  a  beastly  life  in  a  heavenly  station. 

Its  Infinite  Mercifulness. 

And  yet,  all  this  while,  the  Fatherly  Love  in  its  unwea¬ 
ried  patience,  in  its  unutterable  tenderness,  in  its  awful 
reverence  for  those  who  are  the  Sons  of  the  household, — 
throws  over  the  secret  sins  of  the  fallen  an  impenetrable  veil, 
deals  with  their  most  open  sins  with  infinite  mercifulness, 
— urging  the  guilty  soul  by  incessant  touches  of  shame  and 
regret  and  longing  to  return  to  that  Goodness  who  cannot 
refuse  to  forgive, — and  throwing  over  every  stex>  made  by 
the  returning  sinner,  the  darkness  of  a  secrecy  so  full  of 
respect,  and  pity,  and  gentleness  for  the  humiliated  and 
repentant  soul !  Think,  O  fathers,  of  that  most  divine  story 
left  us  by  the  Incarnate  Mercy,  and  which  is  the  history  of 
His  dealings  with  the  soul  of  every  one  of  us, — the  Parable 
of  the  Prodigal  Son.* 


*  St.  Luke,  xv. 


GODLIKE  CHARITY  OF  ST.  JOHN. 


187 


If  we  would,  therefore,  apprehend  that  Infinite  Love  in 
all  its  fatherly  tenderness  and  generosity,  we  must  conceive 
it  not  only  as  all-embracing,  having  no  manifest  preference 
for  some  of  its  children  over  the  others,  and  excluding 
openly  none  of  the  underserving  from  the  light  and  warmth 
it  dispenses  ;  but  we  must  conceive  of  it  as  drawn  in  a 
special  manner  toward  the  erring  and  the  fallen.  This  is 
the  supernatural  aspect  of  paternal  charity.  And  this 
point,  on  which  we  dare  not  insist  too  much,  every  right- 
minded  and  true-hearted  parent  will  instinctively  under¬ 
stand  and  appreciate. 

Fatherly  Lore  of  St.  John  the  Evangelist. 

A  most  beautiful  instance  of  this  irresistible  impulse  of 
true  fatherly  love,  as  understood  among  Christians,  occurred 
in  the  very  infancy  of  the  Church,  and  is  related  by  one  of 
her  earliest  and  most  eloquent  historians.* 

St.  John  the  Evangelist,  while  visiting  one  of  the  churches 
of  Asia  Minor,  had  remarked  among  the  crowd  a  young 
man  whose  mien  and  bearing  bespoke  uncommon  gifts. 
The  preternatural  insight  of  the  apostle  of  charity  read  in 
that  soul  a  mighty  capacity  for  all  great  deeds,  if  properly 
cultivated, — and  which,  if  neglected,  might  become  a  power 
for  evil.  The  youth  was  then  in  the  first  fervor  of  his  con¬ 
version,  and,  amid  the  fearful  temptations  to  evil  which 
beset  youth  in  that  most  beautiful  but  most  licentious  land, 
he' needed  special  watchfulness  and  care  from  his  religious 
guides. 

St.  John,  whose  angelic  life  and  winning  gentleness  had 
so  powerfully  attracted  the  young  convert,  intrusted  him, 
on  his  departure  for  Ephesus,  to  the  local  bishop.  “In  the 
jjresence  of  Christ,  and  in  the  hearing  of  thy  people,”  the 
apostle  said,  “I  give  this  youth  to  thy  keeping.”  The  trust 
could  not  be  refused  ;  it  was  even  accepted  with  readiness. 
As  it  often  happens,  however,  the  very  fervor  of  the  youth 

*  Eusebius,  “  Ecclesiastical  History/’  book  iii. ,  c.  23  ;  where  he  quotes  as  his 
authority  Clement  of  Alexandria. 


188 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


lulled  the  bishop  into  a  fatal  security.  He  fancied  that  one 
so  good  and  so  generous  had  nothing  to  fear  from  the  seduc¬ 
tions  which  assailed  every  sense  on  that  enchanted  shore, 
and,  more  particularly,  from  the  company  of  his  young  pagan 
friends  and  associates.  The  strict  discipline  in  which  the  j 
young  man  lived  in  the  bishop’s  house,  was  relaxed  after i 
he  had  been  baptized  and  confirmed.  It  was  thought  that 
the  sacramental  grace  would  prove  a  sufficient  protection 
against  the  manifold  evils  of  pagan  life  and  conversation. 

Human  respect — the  fear  of  being  true  to  conscience  in 
presence  of  the  dissolute  or  the  impious — together  with  the 
powerful  incentive  to  sensuality  where  the  whole  world 
around  him  ministered  to  the  senses,  soon  caused  the  un¬ 
guarded  youth  to  fall,,  and  to  fall  to  the  lowest  depths  of 
guilt  and  crime.  He  was  outlawed,  and  betook  himself  to 
the  mountain  passes,  where  he  became  the  chief  of  a  band 
of  highway  robbers,  the  boldest,  bloodiest,  and  most  reck¬ 
less  of  them  all. 

When  the  aged  apostle  returned  to  that  city,  he  missed 
his  protege  among  the  clergy  and  select  youth  of  the 
Church.  “  Where  is  the  youth  that  I  and  Christ  with  me 
intrusted  to  thee  in  presence  of  thy  flock?”  were  the  first 
words  the  fatherly  heart  could  find  in  its  alarm.  “He  is 
dead!”  was  the  answer.  “Dead!  how,  and  when?”  the 
apostle  demanded.  “Dead  to  God  and  to  all  virtue,”  was 
the  mournful  reply. 

John  would  not  be  satisfied  until  he  had  learned  all,  and  as¬ 
certained  where  he  was  likely  to  find  his  prodigal.  So,  though 
in  extreme  old  age,  broken  by  labor  and  suffering,  he  would 
not  re-st  till  he  had  brought  the  lost  sheep  to  the  fold.  It 
was  in  vain  to  represent  to  him  that  the  wild  mountain  tracts 
in  which  the  robbers  dwelt  were  almost  inaccessible  to  man 
and  beast,  or  that  the  men  of  blood  who  found  shelter  and 
impunity  there,  spared  neither  age  nor  sex  ;  the  apostle  set 
out  without  a  moment’s  delay,  repeating  to  the  recreant 
bishop,  who  tried  in  vain  to  oppose  his  mad  project :  “  Oh  ! 
what  a  guardian  have  I  set  over  the  souls  of  my  brethren  !  ” 

“When  he  reached  the  retreat  of  the  robber  band,”  the 


THE  GOOD  SHEPHERD'S  FEARLESS  QUEST 


189 


historian  continues, — “  he  was  surrounded  by  their  scouts. 
He  had  no  thought  of  avoiding  them  and  no  fear  of  the  vio¬ 
lence  they  might  otfer.  He  only  shouted  to  them  :  ‘  I  have 
come  to  seek  your  chief ;  bring  him  to  me  !  ’  The  other  came 
fully  armed  for  a  hostile  encounter  ;  but,  on  perceiving  the 
man  of  God,  he  turned  and  fled.  John,  who  was  on  horse¬ 
back,  followed  him,  crying  out  as  he  went :  ‘  Why  fly  from 
thy  father,  my  son  %  I  am  but  an  old  man,  feeble  and  un¬ 
armed.  0  my  poor  child,  stop  and  listen :  lay  aside  all  ap¬ 
prehension.  There  is  yet  hope  for  thee.  I  shall  be  answer- 
able  to  Christ  for  thee.  I  am  willing  to  die  for  thee,  as  He 
did,  and  ready  to  give  my  soul  for  thine.  Only  stop,  and 
trust  to  me  ;  for  Christ  it  is  who  sent  me  after  thee  V  ” 

The  Wolf  becomes  a  Lamb. 

The  fugitive,  overcome  by  the  appeals  of  that  love  he 
knew  so  well,  turns  on  a  sudden  and  falls  prostrate  at  the 
feet  of  his  pursuer.  He  has  cast  away  his  weapons,  and 
with  his  face  buried  in  the  dust,  he  pours  forth  a  flood  of 
tears,  concealing  the  while  that  guilty  right  hand  which  has 
shed  so  much  innocent  blood.  John  is  kneeling  by  his  side, 
mingling  his  tears  with  those  of  the  guilty  one,  and  protest¬ 
ing  to  him  solemnly  that  he  will  not  rest  till  he  has  obtained 
his  pardon  from  Christ.  He  has  no  horror  of  grasping,  de¬ 
spite  the  other’s  resistance,  that  murderous  right  hand 
which  tears  of  true  rejjentance  are  already  beginning*  to 
cleanse  from  its  stains.  He  brings  him  back  in  triumph  to 
the  church  in  which  he  had  been  baptized,  remains  with  him 
in  prayer,  vigils,  and  fasting,  pouring  forth  his  whole  soul 
to  the  Great  Shepherd  of  the  flock,  to  implore  His  mercy 
on  this  lost  one  which  he  had  reclaimed. 

The  apostle  would  not  quit  his  side,  calming  the  terrors 

and  remorse  of  that  guilty  soul,  by  sweet  and  gentle  words, 

“  charming  the  evil  spirit  out  of  him,” — says  the  historian, 

by  the  accents  and  artifices  of  his  fatherly  love.  Nor  would 

he  commit  the  care  of  that  sick  soul  to  any  one  till  he  had 

led  him  step  by  step  to  expiate  his  enormous  guilt,  to  repair 

» 


190 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


by  the  most  heroic  acts  of  virtue  the  scandals  of  his  sinful 
life,  and  to  become  foremost  in  generous  goodness  as  he  had 
been  foremost  in  crime. 

It  is,  we  would  fain  believe,  a  rare  thing  to  have  to  recall 
the  sinner  from  such  depths  as  these.  And  yet,  considering 
what  we  daily  see,  and  hear,  and  read  of, — there  must  be 
very  many  homes  in  every  class  of  society,  where  deep  guilt 
in  some  child  demands  all  the  arts  of  a  father’s  love  to  sof¬ 
ten  the  sinner’s  heart,  and  all  the  resources  of  his  tender¬ 
ness  to  raise  him  up  to  repentance  and  newness  of  life. 

We  do  not,  however,  hold  up  the  mirror  of  these  Godlike 
examples,  in  order  to  make  parents  behold  therein  these 
extreme  cases,  in  which  deep  guilt  or  degradation  in  a  child 
could  only  be  remedied  by  heroic  charity  in  a  parent. 

The  love  we  would  inculcate  here,  is  that  love  which 
expends  itself  in  the  thousand  and  one  little  home-charities 
of  every  ordinary  day  and  hour,  that  go  to  make  the  house¬ 
hold  so  deeply  happy  in  the  sunshine  of  a  father’s  affec¬ 
tion,  while  it  tends  to  make  every  child  there  good,  and  to 
keep  him  good. 

How  the  Divine  Ideal  is  realized  in  the  Family . 

Yes,  yes ;  you  laughed,  dear  reader,  at  our  effort,  a  mo¬ 
ment  ago,  to  make  you  take  the  Sun  in  the  Heavens  as  the 
model  of  your  practical  tenderness  toward  your  dear  ones. 
We  know  it, — it  is  the  sun  nevertheless  that  imparts  to  the 
glorious  planets  of  our  system  their  brightness  and  their 
vital  warmth.  But  let  the  planets  go  !  Have  you  a  garden 
near  your  home  %  or  beautiful  fields  and  woods  around  it  ? 
or  lovely  flowers  within  it  \  and  are  you  one  who  takes  a 
hearty  pleasure  in  beautiful  things  ? 

Then  feast  your  eyes  on  the  colors  and  shades  which 
clothe  earth  and  sky  around  and  above  your  home  at  morn¬ 
ing,  or  noon,  or  sunset ;  look  into  the  face  of  every  flower 
that  blooms  in  your  garden  or  at  your  window, — as  if  in 
each  you  read  a  delightful  page  of  that  endless  book  of 
beauty,  which  is  only  the  pale  reflection  of  His  charms,  in 


TEE  WISE  LOVE. 


191 


whom  alone  resides  the  essence  and  perfection  of  all  that  is 
most  fair  and  most  bright.  Know  you  not  that  the  mag¬ 
nificences  of  earth  and  sky,  and  the  varied  beauties  and 
fragrance  of  grove  and  garden,  of  cloud  and  daintiest  flower, 
— are  as  much  the  creation  of  the  Sun  in  the  Heavens,  as 
are  the  brightness  of  the  evening  or  the  morning  stars  ? 

And  so, — you,  who  are  the  suns  of  your  own  homes, — 
you  can  by  the  light  of  your  examples  and  the  warmth  of 
your  fatherly  love,  make  the  souls,  the  hearts,  and  minds 
and  lives  of  your  dear  ones  more  beautiful  and  fair  to  look 
upon,  than  the  most  gorgeous  flower  that  ever  bloomed 
beneath  the  sun.  Will  you  refuse  to  give  to  these  souls, 
to  these  dear  and  precious  lives  their  coloring  and  their 
beauty  in  the  eyes  of  God  and  men  and  angels  ? 

II.  How  to  Loxe  Wisely. 

Let  your  love  be  a  wise  love.  Wisdom  is  indispensable 
to  all  who  have  the  charge  of  training  and  governing  others. 
But,  you  will  ask,  what  is  that  wisdom  which  should  tem¬ 
per  the  father’s  love  in  his  government  of  the  household 
and  the  rearing  of  his  children?  Wisdom,  in  so  far  as  it 
regards  the  understanding,  is  the  knowledge  of  the  peculiar 
nature  of  things,  of  the  purposes  for  which  they  were  made, 
and  of  the  means  to  make  each  thing  fit  itself  to  its  pur¬ 
pose.  In  practice,  it  is  the  directing  of  others  according  to 
this  clear  knowledge  of  their  destinies  and  their  capacities. 

The  wise  architect,  besides  the  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
principles,  rules,  and  practice  of  his  art,  seizes  in  every 
work  of  his  the  object  for  which  he  builds,  and  exactly 
suits  the  building  to  the  uses  for  which  it  is  destined.  He 
is  the  best  and  wisest  builder  who  so  plans  and  executes 
every  structure  intrusted  to  him,  that  it  is  the  best  of  its 
kind, — the  best  dwelling-house  for  rich  or  poor,  the  best 
church  edifice  in  view  precisely  of  the  worship  to  be  held 
therein, — the  best  for  the  climate,  and  for  the  people  ;  the 
best  for  durability,  and  the  best  in  proportion  to  the  means 
of  those  who  rear  it. 


192 


TRUE  ME  IT  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


The  wise  father  studies  carefully  the  dispositions  of  each 
of  his  dear  ones, — just  as  the  musician  studies  the  capacity 
of  his  instrument  and  the  power  of  each  of  its  chords, — 
just  as  the  wise  gardener  acquaints  himself  with  the  habits 
of  all  and  each  of  his  fruit  trees,  so  that  each  one  may  be 
so  trained,  so  cared  for,  as  to  yield  its  utmost  in  due 
season. 

The  Divine  Art  of  Training  Children. 

The  art  of  cultivating,  developing,  governing  souls  (we 
say  nothing  of  bodily  strength  and  health,  in  themselves  so 
exceedingly  important),  is  of  all  arts  the  most  difficult,  re¬ 
quiring  the  highest  wisdom,  skill,  and  prudence.  We  have 
known  parents, — nay,  we  see  such  every  day, — who  seem 
gifted  with  almost  a  divine  insight  into  child-nature,  and 
endowed  with  somewhat  of  the  divine  skill  in  managing 
their  various  capacities  and  dispositions.  They  display  a 
like  superhuman  prudence  in  training  such  as  are  weak, 
or  perverse,  or  fractious, — addressing  themselves,  in  their 
method  of  education,  to  the  affections  of  each  child,  calling 
forth  what  is  noblest  and  purest  and  best  in  their  nature, 
and  making  them,  even  from  earliest  infancy,  to  love  to  do 
what  is  repugnant  to  sense  or  to  inclination. 

Unwise  Lore. 

Other  parents  there  are, — excellent  in  many  respects, 
religious,  exemplary,  gentle, — under  whose  care  children 
grow  up  like  fruit  trees  that  are  never  pruned,  or  grafted  ; 
around  whose  roots  no  loving  hand  has  dug  to  loosen  the 
soil  or  to  manure  it ;  from  whose  trunk  hurtful  parasites  or 
insects  have  never  been  removed.  The  trees  are  of  the 
choicest  kind,  the  soil  is  of  the  most  favorable,  and  grafts 
from  the  very  same  stock  produce,  in  the  neighboring  gar¬ 
den,  fruits  the  most  abundant  and  delicious.  But  the 
neighboring  gardener  makes  of  fruit-growing  a  labor  of 
love  and  a  science. 

We  have  seen  parents, — themselves  the  sad  subjects  of 


THE  WISE  LOVE  THAT  SAVES. 


193 


inherited  moral  disease,  love  their  children  with  a  love  so 
absorbing  and  so  unwise,  that,  knowing  them  to  be  prone 
to  the  parental  weaknesses,  they  could  nevertheless  refuse 
nothing  to  their  appetites  ; — nay,  they  would  glut  these 
poor  diseased  little  ones  with  every  aliment  most  fitted  to 
develop  in  them  the  fatal  germs  of  the  ancestral  vice! — 
This  was  not  loving  either  wisely  or  well. 

Example  of  Heroic  Wisdom  in  a  Father. 

The  heroic  love  of  one  father,  and  the  marvelous  success 
that  rewarded  his  culture,  deserve  to  be  held  up  to  the  ad¬ 
miration  of  our  readers. 

He  was  a  lawyer, — the  son  of  a  man  whose  transcendent 
talents  might  have  placed  him  in  the  front  rank  of  any  pro¬ 
fession,  but  whose  incorrigible  intemperance  had  marred  all 
his  brilliant  prospects,  consigning  himself  to  the  madhouse 
and  leaving  his  six  orphan  children  to  utter  poverty.  The 
son  of  whom  we  speak  here,  was  the  last  of  four  brothers, 
and  the  youngest  but  one  of  the  whole  family.  His  mother 
died  when  the  boy  was  in  his  third  year,  a  year  after  his 
father  had  become  a  hopeless  lunatic,  and  six  months  after 
giving  birth  to  her  sixth  child.  The  two  youngest  children 
were  adopted  by  a  maiden  aunt ;  of  the  four  others  we  need 
make  no  further  mention  than  to  say,  that  the  oldest  son 
drank  himself  to  death  before  he  was  thirty. 

Our  little  hero  found  in  his  aunt  and  adopted  mother, 
that  supernatural  love  and  wisdom  begotten  of  true  piety, 
which  enabled  her  to  discharge  the  duties  she  had  assumed 
toward  her  little  orphans,  with  rare  devotion  and  success. 
The  infant, — a  little  girl, — was  saved  and  brought  up  by  a 
miracle  of  tender  nursing,  so  fragile  was  the  life  she  inher¬ 
ited.  The  little  brother  was  watched  over  with  more  than  a 
mother’s  care.  The  slender  means  of  his  aunt  were  so  hus¬ 
banded  by  her  that  she  could  send  him  to  college  in  due 
time, — and  his  progress  in  learning  wTas  prodigious.  His 
nature  was  a  most  passionate  one  ;  but  the  piety  imbibed  at 
home  and  sedulously  fostered  by  his  admirable  masters,  as 

13 


194 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


well  as  tlie  recollection  of  his  father’ s  failing  and  fate,  acted 
on  the  boy  and  the  youth  as  a  powerful  restraint. 

It  was  his  good  fortune,  on  entering  college,  to  meet  with 
a  spiritual  director  who  had  known  his  father  well,  and  who 
was  most  anxious  to  save  his  boy  from  the  terrible  enemy 
of  his  family  and  hapxhness.  He  encouraged  the  latter  to 
come  to  him  as  to  a  second  parent  in  all  his  troubles,  taught 
him  to  overcome  his  fierce  outbursts  of  temper,  and  to  re¬ 
fuse  his  appetite  everything  that  was  a  delicacy  or  for 
which  he  felt  a  strong  liking.  On  his  leaving  college,  he  ad¬ 
dressed  him  in  almost  the  words  of  the  good  Father  Clifford 
to  the  celebrated  naturalist,  Charles  Waterton  ;  *  obtained 
from  him  a  solemn  promise  of  life-long  abstinence  from 
everything  intoxicating. 

The  promise  in  his  case,  as  in  that  of  Waterton,  was  kept 
to  the  end  of  life.  He  grew  to  fame  and  to  affluence  as 
well,  dying  at  the  early  age  of  forty- two,  leaving  five  boys 
behind  him,  every  one  of  whom  was  trained  from  his  cradle 
not  only  in  abstinence  from  wine  and  strong  drinks,  but 
even  from  tea  and  coffee.  They  were  noble  boys,  healthy, 
robust,  bright, — models  of  manly  strength  and  beauty,  as 
well  as  of  all  manly  virtue.  Their  father  made  them  his 
constant  companions  from  childhood,  making  them  delight 
in  study  and  in  the  practice  of  all  goodness.  He  asked  them 
to  do  nothing  which  he  did  not  do  himself, — so  that  absti¬ 
nence  seemed  to  them  no  sacrifice.  So  far  as  we  know,  not 
one  has  ever  turned  aside  for  a  moment  from  the  path  in 
which  they  had  learned  to  walk  with  their  excellent  father. 

*  “  One  day,  wlien  I  was  in  tlie  class  of  poetry,  and  which  was  about  two 
years  before  I  left  the  college  (Stonyliurst)  for  good  and  all,  he  called  me  up  to 
his  room.  ‘Charles,’  said  he  to  me  in  a  tone  of  voice  perfectly  irresistible,  *  I 
have  long  been  studying  your  disposition,  and  I  clearly  foresee  that  nothing 
will  keep  you  at  home.  You  will  journey  into  far-distant  countries,  where  you 
will  be  exposed  to  many  dangers.  Promise  me,  that  from  this  day  forward,  you 
will  never  put  your  lips  to  wine,  or  to  spirituous  liquors.  The  sacrifice  is 
nothing,’ added  he  ;  ‘  but  in  the  end  it  will  prove  of  incalculable  advantage  to 
you.’  I  agreed  to  his  enlightened  proposal ;  and  from  that  hour  to  this,  which 
is  now  about  nine-and-tliirty  years,  I  have  never  swallowed  one  glass  of  any 
kind  of  wine  or  of  ardent  spirits.’  ” — Norman  Moore,  Life  of  Charles  Waterton, 
prefixed  to  the  “  Essays  on  Natural  History,”  London,  1871. 


A  NOBLE  EXAMPLE  NOBLY  FOLLOWED. 


195 


Is  not  this  the  way, — approved  by  nature  and  blessed  of 
God, — to  neutralize  and  eradicate  the  fatal  germs  of  ances¬ 
tral  weakness  and  vice  ?  And  was  not  this  to  love  wisely 
and  well  ? 

Another  Example  of  Wise  Lore  in  a  Father. 

Another  instance,  in  which  a  like  fatherly  wisdom  saved 
his  child  from  hereditary  consumption, — may  suggest  a  no 
less  useful  moral,  and  shall  now  be  related. 

A  man  of  wealth  and  position  had  seen  his  wife  and  four 
children  taken  from  him  successively  by  that  insidious  and 
implacable  distemper.  One  child,  a  daughter,  was  left  to 
him.  How  could  he  save  her  ?  By  a  sort  of  inspiration  he 
resolved  to  harden  her  frame,  as  she  grew  up,  to  every 
influence  of  the  atmosphere,  while  accustoming  her  to  sim¬ 
ple  and  nourishing  diet  and  to  regular  though  not  excessive 
out- door  exercise.  From  childhood  she  was  made  to  take 
a  daily  cold  bath,  and  when  vacation  time  came  yearly  for 
her  father,  he  took  her  with  him  to  the  mountains,  lived 
with  her  in  the  open  air,  in  a  tent,  and  made  her  swim  for 
an  hour  every  morning  and  evening,  even  through  the  cold 
autumn  weather.  She  is  now  a  lovely  woman,  the  robust 
mother  of  a  large  family  of  children,  whom  she  brings  up 
after  the  manner  she  was  herself  trained:  Will  this  method 
prove  an  effectual  remedy  to  the  inherited  disposition  to 
consumption?  We  shall  not  dispute  it  with  the  doctors, 
nor  trespass  on  professional  ground.  But  surely  there  is  a 
virtue  in  generous  abstinence,  as  well  as  in  the  healthful 
use  of  nature’ s  own  appliances,  besides  the  blessing  which 
the  God  of  nature  bestows  on  all  generosity  and  self-denial. 

• 

Sublime  Example  of  the  Eechabites. 

There  is, — to  confirm  such  fatherly  wisdom  and  generos¬ 
ity  as  we  would  fain  inculcate  here, — a  most  memorable 
example  left  us  in  Holy  Writ. 

When  the  Hebrew  tribes  were  painfully  threading  their 


196 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


way  from  Egypt  through  the  frightful  labyrinth  of  the 
Sinaitic  Peninsula, — a  family  of  Madianites, — who  had, 
probably,  known  Moses  during  his  ]ong  exile  in  their  midst, 
— cast  their  lot  with  him  and  his  people,  renouncing  the 
idolatry  of  their  ancestors,  and  becoming  thenceforward  in¬ 
vincibly  faithful  to  the  one  true  God.  Even  when  Israel 
had  fallen  away  into  licentiousness  and  corruption, — these 
generous  converts  only  seemed  the  more  bent  on  honoring 
the  God  of  their  choice  by  purity  and  austerity  of  life. 

The  fearful  sensuality  which  characterized  the  Phoenicians 
and  Canaanites,  had  made  on  these  simple-minded  Arabs  so 
painful  an  impression,— that  they  refused  to  live  in  cities, 
lest  they  should  become  contaminated  by  the  luxuries  of 
city-life.  A  portion  of  them  withdrew  to  the  northern  ex¬ 
tremity  of  Palestine,  and  the  remainder  settled  in  the  pas¬ 
toral  wildernesses  of  the  south,  not  far  from  the  cradle  of 
their  race.  In  the  times  of  the  early  kings  of  Judah  and 
Israel,  when  the  majority  of  the  people  seemed  to  have 
given  up  forever  the  worship  of  the  true  God,  and  to  sully 
their  homes  and  lives  with  all  the  abominations  of  the 
heathen,  the  chief  of  thi£  tribe  of  Cenites  or  Kenites  was 
Jonadab,  the  son  of  Pechab.  To  preserve  his  descendants 
from  this  dreadful  apostasy  and  its  punishment,  he  bound 
them  by  solemn  oath  to  drink  no  wine,  to  plant  or  possess 
no  vineyard,  to  build  no  houses,  and  to  live  always  in  tents 
far  away  from  the  atmosphere  of  cities. 

To  this  solemn  engagement  these  Pechabites  ever  after¬ 
ward  continued  faithful,  affording  so  shining  an  example  of 
constant  purity,  piety,  and  austerity  amid  the  increasing 
degeneracy  of  the  Israelites,  that  God  allowed  them  to 
share  in  the  ministrations  of  his  temple, — as  if  they  be¬ 
longed  to  the  priestly  tribe, — and  pledged  Himself  to  per¬ 
petuate  their  race  forever.* 

Even  when  the  blood  of  the  Apostle  James  was  being 
shed  near  the  Temple, — almost  on  the  eve  of  its  final  de¬ 
struction,  the  generous  voice  of  a  Rechabite  “  cried  out 
protesting  against  the  crime.”  f 


*  Jeremias,  xxxv.  19. 


f  Eusebius,  “Ecclesiastical  History/'  ii.  23. 


A  TRUE  FATHER'S  UNDYING  GLORY. 


197 


God  not  to  be  surpassed  in  Generosity . 

We  are  not  without  proof  that  the  Divine  Goodness  has 
magnificently  kept  his  promise  to  this  race  of  noble  men. 
Benjamin  of  Tudela  in  the  twelfth  century  mentions  that 
he  found  the  Rechabites  to  the  number  of  one  hundred 
thousand,  fulfilling  to  the  letter  every  part  of  the  promise 
made  to  their  glorious  ancestor,  tilling  the  ground,  living  in 
tents,  pasturing  their  herds  and  flocks,  and  abstaining  from 
everything  which  could  intoxicate.  In  the  present  century, 
a  European  teacher,  Dr.  Wolff  (1829),  found  the  Beni-Khabr 
(sons  of  Rechab)  to  the  number  of  sixty  thousand  in  one 
place  in  Arabia,  walking  in  the  law  of  their  fathers. 

The  conclusion  must  force  itself  on  the  serious-minded 
reader.  Jonadab  saw  that  to  preserve  himself,  his  brethren, 
and  their  descendants  from  physical  degeneracy  and  ex¬ 
tinction  as  a  race,  as  w^ell  as  from  the  deep  guilt  of  idol- 
worship,  he  must  adoj3t  and  practice  absolute  and  perpetual 
simplicity,  austerity,  and  purity, — utter  and  perpetual  re¬ 
nouncement  of  all  the  luxuries  of  civilized  life,  and  the 
pleasures  of  the  table.  He  did  not  hesitate.  And  for  nearly 
three  thousand  years  there  are  the  descendants  of  that  man, 
beneath  the  gaze  of  the  whole  world,  sacredly  keeping  to  the 
promise  made  to  God  by  their  fathers !  There  is  nothing 
like  it  elsewhere  in  profane  history. 

Surely,  this  generous  parent  and  reformer  loved  his  chil¬ 
dren  wisely  and  well ! 

This  is  what  one  father  did  three  thousand  years  ago, — a 
simple  Arab,  unused  to  all  the  devices  ministering  to  the 
comfort  and  enjoyment  of  life,  for  which  we  have  coined  the 
lying  name  of  progress ; — he,  this  liigh-souled  man  who 
feared  God  and  loved  his  children, — swore  for  them  to  be 
true  to  God  and  to  be  self-denying.  And  no  lapse  or  length 
of  time  has  made  them  swerve  from  their  oath  ! 

On  what  an  “ awful  throne”  did  these  glorious  descend¬ 
ants  of  a  true  man  place  their  father  !  And  how  truly  did 
the  “ patient  power”  of  that  strong,  wise,  and  fatherly  love 


198 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


of  long  ago,  cover  his  descendants  and  the  world  in  which 
they  dwelt  with  its  “ healing  wings” — as  if  the  might  and 
love  of  Jehovah  himself  shielded  them  from  harm  amid  the 
political  revolutions  that  have  never  ceased  to  convulse  their 
country, — more  destructive  in  their  effects  than  the  simoom 
and  its  whirlwinds  of  burning  sand  ! 

Would  that  Christian  fathers  in  our  midst  could  nerve 
themselves  to  such  generosity  and  self-sacrifice  !  God  alone 
knows  how  deeply,  how  fearfully  our  nineteenth  century 
needs  it. 

III.  Liberality ,  Hospitality ,  Charity  to  the  Poor. 

As  to  the  other  virtues  which  should  distinguish  the 
father  in  his  government  of  the  home, — we  may  dismiss 
them  in  a  few  words. 

That  he  may  ever  be  in  the  eyes  of  his  dear  ones  the 
living  representative  of  the  divine  perfection,  let  him  be 
careful  to  add  to  the  wisdom,  and  patient,  all-embracing 
love,  we  have  spoken  of,  the  liberality  and  hospitality 
which  make  his  home  lovely  to  the  friends  or  the  stran¬ 
gers  he  admits  to  his  table,  or  to  the  poor  and  the  needy 
in  whose  behalf  he  acts  the  part  of  God’s  open-handed 
steward. 

Let  him,  no  matter  how  hard  has  been  his  battle  with  the 
world  in  amassing  wealth  or  securing  comfort  and  independ¬ 
ence,  never  allow  his  children  to  believe  that  his  heart  is  set 
on  what  he  possesses.  This  superiority  to  riches  and  pos¬ 
sessions,  this  independence  of  all  that  men  value  most, — 
will  be  only  a  higher  degree  of  likeness  to  the  Heavenly 
Father,  who  is  supremely  independent  of  all  created  things, 
even  while  He  ministers  to  our  needs  with  such  magnificent 
liberality,  and  decks  heaven  and  earth  with  such  beauty 
and  splendor. 

It  is  needful  to  a  child’s  estimate  of  his  father’s  great¬ 
ness  of  soul,  that  he  should  find  him  ready  to  give  up  the 
whole  world  for  God,  and  so  drawn  to  the  Infinitely  Great 
and  Good  and  Fair, — that  he  can  only  love  all  things  out¬ 
side  of  God  in  conformity  to  the  divine  will  and  pleasure. 


FATHERLY  LOVE,  FIRM  AND  GENTLE. 


199 


Fatherly  Lore  must  be  Firm  and  Authoritative. 

Wise  and  fruitful  of  good  a  father’s  love  cannot  be,  un¬ 
less  it  be  at  the  same  time  full  of  that  gentle,  calm  firmness 
which  will  be  obeyed.  The  will  which  enforces  obedience 
willingly  and  lovingly  in  the  Home,  can  never  be  one  that 
is  violent,  fiery,  impulsive,  and,  therefore,  changing  and 
inconstant. 

A  hot,  imperious,  wrathful  disposition  may  enforce  obe¬ 
dience  in  an  army  or  on  board  a  ship.  There  authority  is 
despotic  and  irresistible, — every  act  of  disobedience  and 
mutiny  having  to  be  repressed  by  immediate  and  pitiless 
punishment.  For  no  ship  is  safe,  and  no  army  can  exist 
for  an  instant,  in  which  the  voice  of  the  commander  may  be 
questioned  or  set  aside  by  his  subordinates. 

In  the  family  the  father  must  govern  by  a  mixture  of 
genuine,  enlightened  love,  and  calm,  indomitable  firmness. 
All  who  are  subject  to  him  must  feel  instinctively  that  what 
the  father  wills,  he  wills  lovingly,  justly,  reasonably  ; — and 
that  his  ivill  is  law.  ' 

It  is  scarcely  possible,  where  a  man  is  impulsive,  passion¬ 
ate,  and  imperious  toward  his  children, — that  his  commands 
can  be  regulated  either  by  justice,  reason,  or  wisdom. 
Hence,  the  minds  of  the  children  will  rebel  against  them, 
though  force  may  compel  them  to  be  silent  and  obey. 
Where,  on  the  contrary,  they  know,  from  their  parent’s 
habitual  disposition,  that  he  is  himself  governed,  in  every 
order  he  gives,  by  reason,  calm  judgment,  and  true  love  for 
their  own  welfare, — and  where,  especially,  experience  has 
taught  them  that  he  means  what  he  says,  and  exacts  com¬ 
pliance  with  his  will, — there  you  may  be  sure  to  find  neither 
disobedience,  nor  disorder. 

Gentle  Firmness  and  Persistency  exemplified  in  Nature. 

Nothing  is 'so  wonderful  in  the  certainty  with  which  it 
accomplishes  its  purpose  and  overcomes  obstacles  seemingly 


200 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


irresistible,  as  the  gentle  and  persistent  working  of  the 
forces  and  laws  of  nature. 

Take  up  a  cocoanut  on  its  native  soil  and  when  it  has 
fallen  in  full  maturity  from  the  tree.  Its  shell  is  as  hard, 
one  would  think,  as  iron,  without  a  break  or  an  opening  on 
its  surface.  If  you  would  get  at  the  delicious  substance 
within  you  must  employ  your  Avhole  strength  to  break  the 
shell.  And  yet,  if  you  plant  that  nut  in  the  ground,  under 
the  conditions  favorable  to  germination,  the  pulp  within 
will  put  forth  a  little  white  leaf  as  soft  as  cream,  and  the 
growth  and  constant  pressure  of  this  soft  and  tender  sub¬ 
stance  will  pierce  or  burst  the  hard  shell,  opening  a  way  to 
the  imprisoned  life,  that  in  its  time  will  become  a  stately 
tree. 

See  these  ancient  cities  of  Mexico,  Central  America,  and 
New  Granada,  with  the  magnificent  temples  and  palaces 
which  attest  the  genius  and  civilization  of  races  now  passed 
away.  One,  who  could  have  seen  these  mighty  structures 
in  all  their  glory,  would  have  said  that  the  great  blocks  of 
which  they  are  built,  and  the  skill  with  which  these  are  put 
together,  must  surely  defy  the  action  of  time.  And  yet  the 
feeble  and  graceful  creepers  of  the  tropics,  by  sending  their 
tiny  roots  into  every  joint  and  crevice,  have  separated  huge 
block  from  block,  rupturing  and  disintegrating  the  hard 
stone  with  its  marvelous  sculptures, — till  the  whole  now 
offers  to  the  eye  of  the  traveler  but  a  confused  heap  of  frag¬ 
mentary  ruins. 

There  is,  nearer  home,  another  and,  perhaps,  a  more  start¬ 
ling  instance  of  the  resistless  might  of  the  silent  and  slowly- 
working  forces  of  nature.  We  remember  in  the  early 
spring  of  1847,  how  a  portion  of  the  huge  and  majestic  cliff 
crowned  by  the  Citadel  of  Quebec,  gave  way  suddenly,  fall¬ 
ing  over  and  burying  the  houses  and  inhabitants  that 
nestled  at  its  foot. 

The  water  had  penetrated  into  what  was  at  first  a  little 
narrow  cleft  in  the  rock.  But  water,  in  freezing,  enlarges 
its  volume  with  a  force  that  nothing  can  withstand.  So 
each  winter  the  cleft  grew  in  width,  admitting  a  larger 


NATURE’S  GENTLE  AND  MIGHTY  FORGES. 


201 


quantity  of  snow  and  rain  and  gravel.  The  alternate  pro¬ 
cess  of  freezing  and  thawing  went  on  silently,  impercep¬ 
tibly  to  the  military  men  who  watched  in  the  citadel  and  the 
civilians  who  slept  in  conscious  security  beneath, — till  one 
spring  night  the  mass  of  half-melted  snow  and  water  was 
such  that  a  single  night’s  frost  completed  the  work  of  ages, 
detached  a  vast  mass  from  the  hillside,  and  sent  it  toppling 
over  into  the  river  beneath. 

Even  now  there  is,  a  little  above  the  former  rift,  a  new  one 
that  is  yearly  increasing,  and  which  no  power  known  to 
man  can  prevent,  in  its  own  time,  from  working  a  similar 
catastrophe. 

The  force  of  fatherly  government  should  bev  thus  gentle, 
constant,  and  irresistible.  Children,  servants,  dependants 
of  every  kind,  are  perfectly  conscious  of  this  calm,  unruffled, 
resistless  temper  of  a  parent.  Even  animals  feel  and  obey 
it.  The  most  spirited  and  fiery  horses  know  when  the  hand 
that  holds  the  reins  is  strong,  firm,  and  gentle  withal, — and 
they  obey  its  direction  and  guidance  implicitly.  Not  so 
when  the  man  who  guides  them  is  fiery,  impatient,  and  un¬ 
steady.  They  become  feverish,  nervous,  fidgety,  and  un¬ 
governable. 

y 

How  Violence  paralyzes  the  best  Qualities. 

Need  we  say  more?  Let  an  example  or  two  serve  to 
impress  this  vital  truth. 

Napoleon  the  First  was  a  man  of  surprising  genius.  He 
was  not  only  the  greatest  of  generals,  but  one  of  the  great¬ 
est  of  legislators.  Yet,  it  has  been  said  of  him  by  one  who 
knew  him  well  and  intimately,  that  what  his  sword  had 
won  on  the  battle-field,  his  ungovernable  temper  lost  him  in 
the  council  chamber.  He  aspired  to  be  the  master  of  the 
•  'orld,  and  had  at  one  time  become  the  arbiter  of  Europe ; 
but  he  had  never  learned  to  control  either  his  anger  or  his 
tongue.  He  thereby  made  mortal  enemies  not  only  of  the 
allied  princes  he  could  have  bound  to  himself  by  gentleness 
and  generosity, — but  of  his  prime-minister  Talleyrand,  who 


202 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


knew  liow  to  dissimulate  and  be  silent,  and  who  became 
Napoleon’s  evil  genius  and  perfidious  counselor. 

His  own  brothers  hated  and  opposed  him.  Before  his 
death,  at  St.  Helena,  he  said :  “I  have  been  spoiled  by  suc¬ 
cess.  Circumstances  and  my  own  energy  of  character  have 
been  such,  that  from  the  instant  I  gained  military  superior¬ 
ity,  I  acknowledged  neither  master,  nor  laws.” 

In  other  and  far  inferior  stations  we  every  day  see  men, 
who  are  remarkably  successful  as  business  or  professional 
men,  and  whose  home-life  is  one  of  disorder,  discomfort, 
misery,  and  utter  failure. 

We  know  of  one  man  whose  great  talent  for  organization 
and  energy  of  character  enabled  him  to  colonize  one  of  our 
loveliest  valleys  in  the  interior,  and  to  found  one  of  our  most 
beautiful  cities.  Yet  could  he  not  wield  over  his  own  house¬ 
hold  that  wise,  gentle,  firm  sway  without  which  American 
boys  grow  up  spendthrifts  and  vagrants. 

If  the  true  father  and  the  true  man,  for  whom  these  pages 
are  written,  is  sincerely  desirous  to  see  his  home-life  as 
blessed  as  his  public  life  has  been  laborious,  arduous,  and 
successful, — let  him  learn  well  the  lesson  conveyed  here. 
Let  him  practice  self-restraint,  and  teach  it  to  his  children. 
Those  who  have  never  learned  to  govern  themselves,  are  but 
ill  fitted  to  govern  others, — to  govern  children  especially, 
who  are  so  wise,  so  logical,  so  clear-sighted  to  perceive  the 
monstrous  contradictions  between  an  authority  which  would 
impose  laws  and  punish  their  infraction,  while  remaining 
itself  lawless,  unruly,  and  most  unreasonable. 


CHAPTEE  XI. 


THE  FATHER’S  SUPREME  DUTY:  TO  MAKE  HIS  HOME  THE 

SCHOOL  OF  REVERENCE. 


They  gave  me  a  master  who  was  rich  in  high  virtue,  the  Margrave  Henry  of 
Austria,  who  served  women  with  full  loyalty,  and  spake  ever  nobly  of  them  as 
a  knight  should.  He  was  mild,  bold,  and  of  a  high  heart,  wise  with  the  wise, 
and  foolish  with  the  foolish ;  he  endured  labor  for  the  sake  of  honor,  and  his 
mouth  never  spake  a  bad  word  ;  to  all  his  friends  he  was  generous  and  faith¬ 
ful  ;  and  he  loved  God  from  his  heart.  This  worthy  master  said  to  me  : 
Whoever  would  live  well,  must  give  himself  up  to  serve  a  woman.  He  taught  me 
much  of  his  gentle  virtue,  how  to  speak  of  women  ;  how  to  ride  on  horseback, 
and  to  compose  sweet  verses  ;  he  said,  Thereby  will  a  young  man  endear  him¬ 
self  to  people,  when  he  can  praise  women  with  gentleness,  and  when  he  loves  them 
more  dearly  than  himself :  for  (said  he)  that  which  arises  from  a  flattering  and  lying 
mind  can  never  succeed  with  the  good.  Had  I  fulfilled  all  that  he  said  to  me,  I 
should  have  been  worthier  than  I  am. — Ulrich  von  Lichtenstein.* 

Reverence , — the  Grand  Feature  of  Christian  Homes. 

The  happiness  of  the  world  and  the  salvation  of  society 
itself,  must  depend  on  the  manner  in  which  women,  within 
the  home-sanctuary,  mold  men  to  loftiness  of  soul  and  gen¬ 
tleness  of  life,  while  the  father  and  husband,  by  word  and 
example,  teaches  his  sons  a  sovereign  respect  for  every  one 
that  bears  the  name  of  woman. 

Do  not  pass  lightly  over  this  thought,  as  if  the  practical 
chivalry  it  inculcates  belonged  to  the  society  of  the  past,  or 
as  if  this  supreme  reverence  for  woman  could  never  again 
become  the  worship  of  all  Christian  homes  and  the  distinc¬ 
tive  virtue  of  all  young  men  who  are  proud  of  their  Chris- 


*  “Duties  owed  to  Women.” 


203 


204 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


tian  mothers,  and  proud,  too,  of  doing  homage  to  her  who  is 
the  ever-blessed  Mother  of  Christ. 

More  priceless  than  all  the  treasures  ever  buried  in  the 
bosom  of  the  deep  and  recovered  by  the  appliances  of 
human  skill,  are  such  fundamental  truths  as  this,  which 
await  the  serious  inquirer  in  the  very  first  pages  of  the 
Gospel. 

We  all  know  how  the  first  words  of  prophecy  ever  uttered 
by  man,  *  were  inspired  by  the  Deity  f  and  applied  to  the 
divine  institution  of  Matrimony.  He  who  came  to  restore 
this  fundamental  ordinance  of  the  divine  economy  to  its 
primitive  unity  and  firmness,  and  who  perfected  all  preced¬ 
ing  legislation  in  His  law  of  charity,  generosity,  and  self- 
sacrifice,  also  gave,  in  the  lives  of  his  Mother,  of  St.  Joseph, 
his  foster-father,  and  in  his  own  private  life  at  Nazareth, 
the  examples  of  the  very  home-virtues  needed  throughout 
all  time. 

She  who  was  to  be  the  Mother  of  the  Redeemer,  had  been 
united  to  her  kinsman  Joseph  by  a  true  marriage, — a  mar¬ 
riage  founded  on  exalted  and  mutual  affection.  Both  had 
left  father  and  mother  and  the  whole  world  to  cast  their  lot 
together,  under  God’ s  wonderful  guidance,  in  poverty,  toil, 
obscurity,  and  perfect  union  of  hearts.  It  was  a  union 
sanctified  by  so  special  a  grace,  that  from  the  virginal  love 
and  life  of  both  was  to  spring  and  blossom  forth  that  Tree 
of  Life  in  whose  blessed  fruits  and  leaves  was  to  be  the  heal¬ 
ing  and  salvation  of  the  world.  $  Just  as  John  the  Baptist, 
His  forerunner,  was  endowed  before  his  birth  and  through 
Mary’s  instrumentality,  with  a  grace  that  made  him  shine 
like  the  morning  star,  the  precursor  of  the  sun, — even  so 
were  both  Mary  and  Joseph  privileged  with  the  purity  and 
holiness  that  fitted  them  to  be  the  parents  and  first  com¬ 
panions  of  the  Holy  One  of  Israel. 

Threefold  Reverence  practiced  at  Nazareth. 

We  find  in  the  lowly  home  at  Nazareth  of  Joseph  and 


*  Genesis,  ii.  21,  22,  23,  24.  f  Matthew,  xix.  4,  5,  G.  \  Apocalypse,  xxii.  1, 2. 


THIS  REVERENCE  NOW  NECESSARY. 


205 


Mary,  honored  during  thirty  years  by  the  presence  of  the 
incarnate  Son  of  God,  the  practice  of  that  threefold  rever¬ 
ence,  which  has  been  characteristic  down  to  the  present 
century,  of  every  Christian  family  and  state, — the  reverence 
for  God,  for  parental  authority,  and  for  woman.  More  than 
ever,  at  a  time  when  false  science  and  revolutionary  socialism 
league  themselves  together  to  destroy  the  foundations  both 
of  domestic  and  of  civil  society,  does  it  become  necessary 
to  insist  upon  this  threefold  reverence,  without  which  all  the 
glory  of  our  civilization  must  disappear  forever. 

The  Christian  family,  wherever  it  was  free,  during  the 
past  eighteen  hundred  years,  resembled  the  settler  in  some 
one  of  our  lovely  valleys  in  the  interior, — along  the  course 
of  the  Susquehanna,  the  Wyoming,  or  the  Connecticut. 
He  had  placed  his  home  high  above  the  stream,  so  that 
the  sweep  of  no  inundation  could  reach  it ;  and  for  genera¬ 
tions  had  beheld  from  his  secure  position  the  fields  and 
farmsteads  far  and  near  laid  waste  in  spring  by  the  devas¬ 
tating  waters.  But  lo  !  he  wakes  up  from  his  fancied  se¬ 
curity  one  morning  to  see  a  portion  of  the  bluff  on  which  he 
has  built,  ingulfed  in  the  swollen  river,  and  to  discover 
that  the  swift-flowing  waters  are  slowly  but  steadily  under¬ 
mining  the  very  soil  beneath  his  foundations. 

This  Reverence  now  more  than  ever  Necessary. 

The  waters  of  unbelief  are  daily  rising  higher  and  higher, 
undermining  the  hitherto  secure  foundations  of  the  family 
and  the  community  ;  the  captious  errors  of  the  socialist 
and  the  communist  are  sinking  deeply  into  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  the  vicious  and  idle  who  will  not  work,  and  of  the 
hard-toiling  poor  whose  work  is  but  ill  requited, — like  a 
conflagration  which  acquires  fiercer  destructive  force  from 
everything  it  preys  upon. 

We  must  build  the  home  far  away  from  the  mighty  flood 
and  high  above  the  reach  of  the  flame, — on  that  Rock  of 
Ages  which  alone  can  withstand  the  utmost  violence  of  the 
deluge,  the  fiery  tempest,  and  the  earthquake.  It  behooves 


206 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


ns,  therefore,  to  convince  ourselves  thoroughly  of  the  deep 
practical  truths  to  be  learned  by  children  and  parents,  by 
rulers  and  subjects,  by  families  and  by  nations,  of  the  Hid¬ 
den  God,  who  toils,  obeys,  and  grows  in  all  spiritual  loveli¬ 
ness  beneath  the  roof  of  the  Carpenter  Joseph. 

I.  Reverence  for  God. 

The  prodigious  self-abasement  of  the  Word  made  Flesh, 
— taken  in  the  whole  compass  of  his  mortal  life,  was  one 
perpetual  act  of  reverential  submission  and  loving  expia¬ 
tion  offered  for  the  entire  race  of  man  by  Him  who  had 
become  the  Second  Adam,  to  repair  the  ruin  caused  by  the 
blind  pride  and  selfish  sensuality  of  the  First.* 

The  infinite  reverence  with  which  the  Second  Eve,  the 
Mother  of  our  Life,  accepts  to  be  associate  with  the  Cruci¬ 
fied  in  his  labors,  humiliations,  and  self-sacrifice, — is  set 
forth  most  eloquently  in  the  simple  words  of  her  answer  to 
the  angel,  “  Behold  the  handmaid  of  the  Lord;  be  it  done 
unto  me  according  to  thy  word!”  And  then,  how  that 
absolute  and  heartfelt  reverence  for  the  expressed  will  of 
the  Deity,  is  manifested  in  the  pains  such  a  Mother  takes 
to  separate  herself  from  all  the  scenes  in  which  her  Son  is 
glorified  by  the  people,  only  taking  her  place, — woman¬ 
like  and  mother-like, — by  His  side  when  He  is  lifted  up 
on  high  in  shame  and  agony !  And  was  the  cry  of  that 
motherly  heart,  pierced  by  a  sevenfold  wound,  not  heard 
along  with  His,  when  He  “  was  heard  for  his  reverence,” 
as  He  yielded  his  spirit  to  his  Father  ? 

But  what  of  him  who  was  the  visible  head  of  that  lowly 
and  most  blessed  household  of  Nazareth  ?  what  of  Joseph, 
the  “just  man,”  true  and  perfect  in  the  discharge  of  his 

*  “  Wherefore  when  He  cometh  into  the  world,  He  saith  :  Sacrifice  and 
oblation  Thou  wouldst  not ;  but  a  body  Thou  hast  fitted  to  me.  Holocausts 
for  sin  did  not  please  Thee.  Then  said  I,  Behold  I  come  :  in  the  head  of  the 
book  it  is  written  of  me,  that  I  should  do  Thy  will,  O  God.” — Hebrews ,  x.  5,  0, 
7.  “Who  in  the  days  of  His  flesh,  with  a  strong  cry  and  tears,  offering  up 
prayers  and  supplications  to  Him  that  was  able  to  save  him  from  death,  was 
heard  for  his  reverence.” — Ibidem ,  v.  7. 


RESPECT  FOR  GOD  INSPIRES  RESPECT  FOR  MAN  207 

office  as  custodian  of  God’s  chiefest  treasures  on  earth,  as 
husband  to  such  a  wife,  and  foster-parent  to  such  a  Son  ? 

See,  when  the  first  perplexity  assails  him,  how  promptly 
and  unhesitatingly  he  yields  obedience  to  the  injunction  of 
the  heavenly  messenger :  ‘  ‘  Fear  not  to  take  unto  thee 
Mary,  thy  wife!”  How  reverently  he  complies  with  the 
divine  command  when  bidden  to  fly  without  preparation  or 
provision  across  the  wilderness  to  Egypt,  trusting  himself 
and  his  precious  charge,  on  the  way  thither  and  while  there, 
to  the  guidance  and  care  of  the  Most  High  and  his  angels  ! 
The  same  reverent  and  trustful  submission  shines  forth  in 
his  receiving  the  order  to  return  to  his  own  country,  and  to 
fix  his  abode  at  Hazareth.  Were  not  he  and  Mary  the 
ready  pupils  in  all  this  of  the  Divine  Babe  who  grew  up 
beneath  their  roof  and  their  nurture, — like  the  Lily  of  the 
Valley  beneath  the  shade  of  twin  palm-trees,  embalming 
with  its  fragrance  and  delighting  with  its  simple  beauty 
only  the  obscure  corner  of  earth  on  which  it  grew  ! 

II.  Reverence  for  Parental  Authority. 

Respect  for  man  can  only  come  from  respect  for  God  ;  a 
loving  and  conscientious  obedience  to  human  authority  can 
only  be  found  in  the  man  who  sees  the  majesty  of  his 
Divine  Author  reflected  on  the  brow  of  parent,  prince,  or 
magistrate.  There  can  be  no  degrading  submission  to  the 
voice  or  will  of  father  and  mother  in  the  home,  when  the 
child  is  taught  and  feels  assured  that  they  speak  and 
command  in  the  place  of  the  Heavenly  Father.  There  is 
nothing  but  ennobling  obedience  in  observing  the  laws  of 
Church  or  State,  in  accepting  the  authority  of  Pope,  bishop, 
and  priest,  —  of  emperor,  king,  or  president, — when  the 
reverent  eye  of  faith  sees  the  Eternal  Lawgiver  behind  the 
earthly  legislator,  and  the  knees  of  the  heart  are  bent  to 
the  Infinite  Majesty,  as  man  bows  down  before  His  repre¬ 
sentatives  here  below. 

When  our  Emmanuel  gave  himself  a  mother  upon  earth 
and  consented  to  pass  for  a  time  among  men  as  the  son  of 


208 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM \ 


tlie  Carpenter  Joseph, — He  did  so  with  the  design  of  teach¬ 
ing  all  after-ages  in  His  own  person  how  they  were  to  reve¬ 
rence  father  and  mother.  He  interrupts  the  obscure  life  of 
toil,  poverty,  humility,  and  obedience  which  he  was  leading 
at  Nazareth,  to  show  Himself  in  his  twelfth  year  at  Jerusa¬ 
lem  the  true  God-Man,  already  fitted  by  the  plenitude  of 
his  wisdom  to  teach  Israel  and  enlighten  the  world, — and 
lo  !  after  proclaiming  to  his  parents  and  to  the  audience 
assembled  in  the  Temple,  that  he  has  an  indefeasible  right 
to  “  be  about  His  Father’s  business,” — he  becomes  once 
more  the  docile  and  dutiful  child,  returns  with  them  forth¬ 
with  to  Nazareth,  and  thenceforth  till  his  thirtieth  year 
“was  subject  to  them,”  and,  as  the  pregnant  years  suc¬ 
ceeded  each  other,  He  “  advanced  in  wisdom,  and  age,  and 
grace  with  God  and  men.”  * 

This  is  the  order  of  nature,  carried  out  by  its  very  Author 
when  he  came  to  repair  and  to  teach  the  world :  it  is  and 
ever  must  be  the  law  of  life  and  of  all  intellectual  and  moral 
advancement,  so  long  as  the  world  exists  and  as  man  con¬ 
tinues  to  be  what  he  is. 

Shall  we  ever  lay  this  truth  to  heart — that  human  society, 
both  in  the  Home  and  in  the  State,  is  paternity,  depend¬ 
ence  and  loving  progress  in  all  moral  worth,  much  more 
than  that  “  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity,”  which  sets 
one  half  of  the  human  race  to  cut  the  throats  and  burn 
down  the  homes  of  the  other  half  ? 

III.  Reverence  for  Woman. 

Ho  we,  in  this  nineteenth  century, — this  age  of  boasted 
progress  and  freedom  from  old  prejudices, — marvel  at  that 
noble  ancestor  of  a  long  line  of  emperors,  who  was  so  “rich 
in  virtue,”  and  “  who  served  women  with  full  loyalty,  and 
spake  ever  nobly  of  them  as  a  knight  should”  ?  We  for¬ 
get  that  she  who,  being  the  Mother  of  our  Head,  is  thereby 
the  Mother  of  us  all,  was  looked  up  to  by  Him  with  all  the 
reverence  which  the  best  of  sons  ever  paid  to  the  best  of 


*  Luke,  ii.  43-52. 


TAUGHT  BY  ANGELS  AND  SAINTS 


209 


mothers.  We  forget  also  that  Mary  was  treated  with  su¬ 
preme  reverence  by  the  angel,  by  Joseph,  her  husband  and 
protector,  and  by  St.  Elizabeth,  their  cousin  ;  and  that  this 
reverence  pervaded  the  entire  Christian  family  down  to  the 
age  of  the  Reformers,  forming  the  very  spring  and  soul  of 
Christian  chivalry  and  the  guiding  principle  of  domestic 
education. 

Read  over  the  passage  of  the  Evangelist  St.  Luke,  in 
which  is  related  the  Angel’s  message  to  Mary,  and  weigh 
well  the  reverent  words  of  salutation  : 

“  Hail,  full  of  grace, — the  Lord  is  with  thee  ! 

Blessed  art  thou  among  women  !  ” 

Then  listen  to  the  almost  adoring  words  of  Elizabeth,  who, 
like  her  unborn  babe,  was  tilled  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  as . 
soon  as  the  Mother  of  the  Hew  Life,  the  Eve  of  the  new 
creation,  the  living  Ark  of  the  Hew  Covenant, — had  crossed 
her  threshold : 

*'  Blessed  art  thou  among  women  ! 

And  blessed  is  the  fruit  of  thy  womb  ! 

And  whence  is  this  to  me 

That  the  Mother  of  my  Lord  should  come  to  me  ?  ” 

And  then,  as  the  Divine  Spirit  rushes  upon  her  own  soul, 
and  opens  out  before  her  eyes  the  book  of  the  future,  the 
trials  and  triumphs  of  the  Christian  church, — her  prophetic 
soul  hears  every  succeeding  age  bending  before  herself  with 
reverence  and  repeating  the  words  of  the  Angel  and  of 
Elizabeth : 

“Behold  from  henceforth  all  generations  shall  call  me 
Blessed !  ’  ’ 

Joseph'  s  respectful  and  faithful  service  to  Mary. 

From  the  hour  that  the  Angel  discloses  to  Joseph  the 
august  mystery  of  Mary’s  Motherhood,  he  understands,  this 
chaste  Joseph  of  the  Hew  Testament,  that  he  is  infinitely 
more  honored  than  Obededom  of  old.  For,  it  is  no  longer 
the  figurative  Ark  of  the  Mosaic  Covenant  that  he  has  the 

14 


210 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  T11EM. 


honor  of  sheltering  beneath  his  roof ;  but  the  true  Ark,  and 
the  abiding  presence  of  the  Incarnate  Deity  bringing  with 
it  untold  blessings.* 

Thenceforth  he  understands  it  to  be  in  conformity  with 
the  divine  plan  that  he  should  devote  himself, — every 
thought,  and  aim,  every  aspiration  and  pulse  of  his  heart, 
every  day  and  hour  of  his  life,  to  the  service  of  that  most 
blessed  Mother,  and  the  preservation  of  that  Life  of  our  life, 
from  its  first  tender  blossoming  on  the  root  of  Jesse  till  its 
glorious  maturity  on  the  Tree  of  Calvary. 

He  knows  that  the  Babe  intrusted  to  his  keeping  is  one  to 
be  ‘  ‘  born  not  of  blood,  nor  of  the  will  of  the  flesh,  nor  of 
the  will  of  man,  but  of  God  ;”  in  the  light  vouchsafed  him 
from  on  high,  he  sees  that  until  the  time  appointed  for  his 
Emmanuel’s  manifestation  by  John,  He  was  to  be,  in  his  life 
of  absolute  dependence  and  laborious  obscurity  at  Nazareth, 
as  if  he  were  in  the  eyes  of  the  nation  “  without  father, 
without  mother,  without  descent.”  The  blood  of  David 
in  the  veins  of  the  high-souled  Carpenter,  and  the  heroic 
spirit  of  David  firing  his  heart,  will  thenceforth  prompt 
him  only  to  deeds  of  unhesitating  devotion  and  self-sacrifice 
to  protect  both  Mother  and  Babe  from  the  manifold  perils 
which  beset  them. 

How  tenderly,  how  reverently  he  watches  over  her  during 
the  period  that  Emmanuel  remains  hidden  within  the  Holy 
of  holies  !  How  full  of  sovereign  respect,  and  love  and  ten¬ 
derness  is  the  solicitude  with  which  he  guides  her  to  Beth¬ 
lehem,  when  “  the  fullness  of  time”  has  come!  And  who 
can  appreciate  his  mingled  grief  and  humiliation,  when  the 
City  of  David  casts  forth  the  Lamb  of  God  in  the  cold  mid¬ 
night  hour  to  be  born  in  a  cave  by  the  roadside  !  And  then 
follows  the  touching  story  of  the  hurried  flight  to  Egypt, 
when  Christ,  the  Hope  of  the  world,  and  his  humble  Vir¬ 
gin-Mother,  are  left,  under  God,  to  the  care  of  this  other 
most  true-hearted  Joseph, — intrusted  with  a  charge  infi- 

*  “  And  tlie  Ark  of  the  Lord  abode  in  the  house  of  Obededom  the  Gethite 
three  months  :  and  the  Lord  blessed  Obededom  and  all  his  household.” — 2  Kings, 

vi.  11. 


CHRISTIANS  REVERENCE  MARY  IN  ALL  WOMEN.  211 


nitely  above  the  administration  of  the  broad  empire  of  the 
Pharaohs. 

Can  we  wonder,  that  this  man,  so  holy,  so  true,  so  hon¬ 
ored  by  God  and  his  angels,  who  was  the  guardian  of  Christ, 
— the  Head  and  Parent  of  regenerated  humanity, — and  of 
Mary,  the  type  of  the  Church,  should  have  been  so  rever¬ 
enced  in  all  Christian  lands,  and  that,  in  our  own  days,  he 
should  at  length  be  solemnly  proclaimed  as  the  Guardian 
and  Protector  of  the  whole  Christian  family  % 

We  have,  therefore,  in  the  very  first  pages  of  the  Gospel 
history  set  before  our  eyes  that  Holy  Family, — as  it  has  been 
called  by  the  reverence  of  Catholic  ages, — that  most  august 
household  in  which  Emmanuel  grew  up  from  infancy  to 
boyhood,  from  boyhood  to  modest  and  gracious  manhood, 
subject  all  the  while  to  his  parents,  both  Mother  and  Child 
respecting  in  the  Carpenter  the  divine  seal  of  that  fatherly 
authority,  whose  prototype  and  fountain-head  is  in  the 
Eternal  God. 

Woman  ever  reverenced  in  Catholic  Households. 

There  never  has  been,  since  Christianity  began,  a  Catho¬ 
lic  family  in  which  Christ,  his  Mother,  and  his  foster-father 
Joseph,  have  not  been  a  reality  most  familiar  to  the  mind 
and  dear  to  the  heart.  Indeed,  every  household  in  Catholic 
lands  has  been  modeled  on  this  sacred  home  of  Nazareth. 
The  devotion  of  Joseph  to  Christ  and  his  interests,  his  rev¬ 
erent  service  toward  the  blessed  Mother  and  her  Babe,  his 
living  faith  and  unquestioning  trust  in  the  all-directing 
providence  of  God, — have  been  the  virtues  proposed  to  the 
imitation  of  Christian  husbands  and  fathers.  Every  man 
within  these  homes  professed  to  reverence  in  wife,  mother, 
and  sister,  the  dear  and  lofty  image  of  Mary’ s  spotless  ex¬ 
cellence.  Nor,  all  through  the  countless  hosts  of  chivalrous 
men,  who  professed  to  honor  women,  was  there  to  be  found 
one  true  man  who*  had  not  been  trained  to  imitate  St. 
Joseph,  and  to  reverence  in  all  women  Mary  Immaculate^ 
the  sweet  Mother  of  the  children  of  God. 


212 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


These  men  saw  with  their  own  eyes,  that,  in  the  women 
of  their  families,  “  Goodness  gave  greatness,  and  greatness 
worship.”  *  And  old  Chaucer,  toward  the  close  of  the 
middle  ages,  gave  expression  not  only  to  the  heart  of  Cath¬ 
olic  England,  but  to  that  of  all  Christendom,  when  he 
wrote : 

“  For  in  reverence  of  the  Heavens  qneene 
We  ought  to  worship  all  women  that  beene. 

For  of  all  creatures  that  ever  wer  yet,  and  borne, 

This  wote  ve  well,  a  woman  was  the  best  .  .  . 

Wherefore  me  thinketh,  if  that  we  had  grace, 

We  oughten  honor  women  in  every  place.” 

If  such  was  the  universal  respect  paid  to  women,  so  many 
ages  after  the  death  of  the  Blessed  Mother  of  God,  and  all 
through  heartfelt  love  for  her  who  is  also  our  sweet  Mother, 
— what,  think  you,  must  have  been  the  love  and  worship 
paid  to  her  by  the  husband  into  whose  hand  and  heart  God 
gave  her  to  keep,  to  honor,  to  cherish  ? 

The  Rule  of  Catholic  Households . 

It  is  impossible  that  any  true  Catholic  man  should  think 
deeply  of  these  things,  and  make  of  the  holy  and  elevating 
sentiments  they  inspire,  a  guiding  principle  in  his  home-life, 
without  reverencing  and  worshiping  his  wife,  the  mother  of 
his  children,  the  angel  of  his  hearth  and  heart.  It  is  quite 
impossible,  where  true  love  in  the  husband  is  begotten  and 
hallowed  by  deep  piety  toward  our  Lord  and  his  Blessed 
Parents,  that  it  should  not  be  manifested  in  a  chivalrous 
devotion  toward  the  wife  and  mother ;  that  his  home 
should  not  be  blessed  with  noble  children, — true  “  children 
of  God,”  full  of  loving  submission  to  father  and  mother, 
and  prompt  to  fulfill  every  duty  of  home-life  and  citizen¬ 
ship. 

Reverence  for  Women  a  Want  of  our  Age . 

Besides, — and  this  observation  is  not  without  its  oppor¬ 
tuneness  at  the  present  moment, — our  Divine  Solomon  is 


*  Ben  Johnson,  “New  Inn.” 


THIS  REVERENT  HUMILITY  BEGETS  HEROISM.  213 

most  anxious  that  we  should  find  in  the  hidden  and  unfail¬ 
ing  treasures  of  instruction  laid  up  for  us  in  the  brief  re¬ 
cords  of  his  own  private  home-life,  what  is  most  needful  for 
our  own  day  and  country.  Unfortunately,  to  very  many 
Catholic  families,  these  treasuries  of  revealed  truth  are 
like  the  magnificent  reservoirs  of  Christ’s  great  ancestor, 
Solomon, — constructed  so  many  ages  before  the  Christian 
era  with  such  forethought  and  munificence,  they  are  now 
discovered,  by  English  and  American  explorers,  at  the  cost 
of  much  money  and  labor.  Uncared  for,  unknown,  hidden 
away  in  Jerusalem,  half-choked  by  ruins,  or  far  away  in 
the  neighboring  mountains  where  the  gigantic  works  are 
scarce  known  to  rulers  or  people, — are  they  not  the  lively 
image  of  our  own  splendid  birthright  of  truth,  lying  around 
us  and  beneath  our  hand,  while  we  cry  out  for  the  living 
waters,  and  the  land  is  desolate  in  its  moral  barrenness  ? 

If  families  and  communities  in  our  nineteenth  century 
will  only  apply  themselves  to  the  study  and  imitation  of 
these  God-given  models  of  private  holiness  and  public  vir¬ 
tue, — if  all  classes  in  society  will  only  revive  in  their  hearts 
and  homes  and  lives  this  threefold  respect  for  God  and  His 
Law,  for  -  parental  authority,  and  for  womanly  purity, — we 
need  not  fear  the  inflow  of  new  ideas  or  the  changes  threat¬ 
ened  by  political  revolutions. 

The  Ideal  Excellence  of  the  Life  at  Nazareth  most 

eminently  practical. 

The  supernatural  light  vouchsafed  in  such  abundance  to 
the  Blessed  Mother  and  her  noble  companion  aimed  at  a 
Jife  of  extraordinary  and  continual  devotion  and  self-sacri¬ 
fice  in  the  cause  of  God’s  highest  interests  and  of  man’s 
salvation.  Their  life-work  was  to  be  that  of  Christ.  They 
were  to  be  identified  with  Him,  and  their  actions  to  be  lost 
in  the  splendor  of  his  career, — just  as  the  planets  nearest 
the  sun,  though  sharing  most  in  its  warmth  and  bright¬ 
ness,  are  lost  in  the  surpassing  effulgence  caused  by  the 
very  nearness  of  the  mighty  luminary. 


214 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


The  obscurity,  the  apparently  purposeless  inactivity  of 
Christ’s  hidden  life  at  Nazareth,  was  no  mystery  to  Mary 
and  Joseph,  how  much  soever  it  may  puzzle  the  ration¬ 
alists  or  half-Christian  biblicists  of  our  modern  literature. 
If  our  divine  Model  wished  to  mark  out,  by  the  deeds  and 
virtues  of  his  brief  public  life,  the  road  which  apostolic 
men  in  the  church  and  statesmen  in  civil  society  should 
be  studious  to  follow, — He  assuredly  wished  no  less  to 
make  of  the  long  years  spent  beneath  the  roof  of  Joseph  in 
toil,  poverty,  obedience,  and  growth  in  all  Godlike  excel¬ 
lence,  a  lesson  to  be  taught  and  imitated  by  the  weary  and 
lieart-sore  millions  of  the  laborious  poor. 

His  parents  were  enlightened  from  above  to  seize  the  di¬ 
vine  purpose  both  in  the  one  and  the  other  ; — and,  just  as 
they  set  themselves  with  their  whole  hearts  to  study  and 
copy  Christ  in  his  long  probationary  humility  and  toil,  so 
did  their  inflamed  love  of  the  divine  glory  dispose  them  to 
follow  Him. 

We  can  thus  conceive,  that  both  husband  and  wife  in 
that  most  blessed  household,  would  encourage  each  other 
to  copy  to  the  life  all  the  excellences  of  the  dear  Model 
they  had  ever  before  their  eyes, — and  even,  were  that  ne¬ 
cessary,  exhort  Him  as  he  grew  up  beneath  their  care,  to 
run  his  own  giant  race  of  obedience  and  self-immolating 
charity.  Such  was  the  heroic  Mother’s  purpose,  when  she 
“ stood”  beneath  Him  in  his  terrible  death-agony,  and 
with  her  most  assuredly  would  have  been  present  Joseph, 
had  he  been  then  among  the  living,  to  support  and  cheer 
both  herself  and  her  Son  in  the  accomplishment  of  this 
supreme  act  of  comformity  to  the  divine  will. 

Nearness  to  Christ  in  both  these  august  personages, 
meant,  therefore,  the  closest  fellowship  with  him  in  abne¬ 
gation,  suffering,  and  all  magnanimity.  It  meant,  practi¬ 
cally,  the  closest  resemblance  to  Him  whom  they  studied 
more  nearly,  copied  more  faithfully,  followed  more  devot¬ 
edly  than  any  of  his  dearest  disciples. 

Thus,  in  the  three  persons  of  the  Holy  Family,  we  have 
the  most  perfect  embodiment  of  purity  ; — and  purity,  let  us 


TO  SERVE  MARY  BEGETS  LOVE  OF  BROTHERHOOD.  215 

not  forget  it,  is  always  strength  of  soul,  and  the  principle 
of  heroism  in  action.  And,  as  it  is  impossible  to  honor 
and  to  practice  purity  without  reverencing  and  honoring 
woman,  so  the  study  of  Christ’s  life  at  Nazareth  and  piety 
toward  His  Mother,  begot  throughout  early  and  medieval 
Christendom,  that  spirit  of  chivalry  which  went  hand  in 
hand  with  the  highest  heroism  in  designing  and  accom¬ 
plishing  great  things. 

A  reasonable  curiosity  which  is  not  exclusively  distinc¬ 
tive  of  scientific  men,  but  belongs  to  all  of  us,  leads  to 
seeking  out  the  sources  of  great  rivers  and  gazing  with  won¬ 
der  at  the  lake  or  the  rivulet  which  is  the  head  and  well- 
spring  of  the  mighty  stream.  So  let  us  look  for  a  moment 
at  some  of  the  sources  in  the  household  piety  of  Catholic 
nations,  of  the  heroism,  courtesy,  and  gentleness  of  manners 
which  we  couple  with  chivalry  and  the  knightly  enterprises 
it  originated. 

Hear  Christian  Spain  through  her-  Xldefonso  of  Toledo : 
“O  my  Lady,  and  my  sovereign  mistress,  Mother  of  my 
Lord,  handmaid  of  thy  Son,  parent  of  the  world’ s  Creator ! 
I  pray  and  beseech  thee  that  I  may  have  the  spirit  of  thy 
Son,  the  spirit  of  my  Redeemer,  that  I  may  think  of  thee 
true  and  worthy  things,  speak  of  thee  true  and  worthy 
things,  and  utter  whatever  is  most  true  and  most  worthy 
concerning  thee. 

“Yes,  I  desire  to  become  the  servant  of  the  Mother  of 
my  God  ;  and  why  I  should  desire  this,  they  know  who 
love  God,  they  see  who  are  faithful  to  God.  .  .  .  But  not 
so  ye,  O  wise  of  this  world,  who  by  your  wisdom  are  made 
fools,  and  who  reject  this  doctrine,  who  refuse  to  believe 
that  she  alone  should  have  Him  for  Son,  whom  every  crea¬ 
ture  hath  for  its  Lord.  But  I,  as  the  servant  of  her  Son, 
desire  to  have  the  testimony  of  submission  to  his  Mother. 
Thereby,  what  serves  the  handmaid  is  referred  to  the  Lord, 
what  is  shown  to  the  parent  redounds  to  the  Child,  what  is 
paid  to  the  Queen  passes  to  the  honor  of  the  King. 

“By  this  Virgin  God  has  come,  and  having  gathered  to¬ 
gether  the  nations  and  the  languages,  we  have  seen  his  glory 


216  TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

as  the  glory  of  the  only-begotten  of  the  Father.  We  have 
flowed  to  Him  from  all  people,  we  ascend  to  this  Lord,  to 
the  mountain  of  the  Lord,  and  to  the  house  of  the  God  of 
Jacob,  which  is  the  Church  of  the  living  God.”* 

To  Love  the  Mother  means  to  Love  the  Son. 

And  this  tender  and  universal  feeling  toward  the  Mother 
of  regenerated  humanity  only  served  to  deepen  the  love  felt 
for  her  Son.  What  St.  Augustine  wrote  toward  the  close 
of  the  fourth  century  held  true  of  all  those  which  followed, 
while  the  reverence  for  the  new  Adam  and  the  new  Eve 
spread  with  the  Church  all  over  the  world  : 

“To  them  who  believe,” — the  great  Doctor  says, — “the 
beautiful  Spouse  (Christ)  is  presented  at  every  turn, — beau¬ 
tiful  in  heaven,  beautiful  on  earth,  beautiful  in  miracles, 
beautiful  in  sufferings,  beautiful  inviting  to  life,  beautiful 
not  heeding  death,  beautiful  laying  down  life,  beautiful  re¬ 
ceiving  it  back  again,  beautiful  on  the  Tree,  beautiful  in  the 
Sepulcher,  beautiful  in  the  celestial  Kingdom.  The  weak¬ 
ness  of  the  flesh  does  not  turn  aside  their  eyes  from  the 
splendor  of  that  beauty.” f 

Mow  Catholic  Ages  Meditated  on  the  Heroic  Deeds  of  Christ 

and  His  Mother. 

In  the  days  of  Augustine  and  Monica,  of  St.  Patrick,  St. 
Bridget,  and  St.  Ildefonso  (died  667),  it  had  become  the  cus¬ 
tom  for  the  Christians  of  both  East  and  West  to  divide  the 
Psalter  into  three  divisions  of  fifty  Psalms  each,  which  they 
recited  or  chanted  in  public.  But  for  the  unlearned  poor, 
and  the  multitudes  who  toiled  in  the  city  and  country,  in 
forest  and  field,  far  away  from  the  churches,  the  sweet  cus¬ 
tom  arose  and  spread  of  reciting  the  Psalter  of  the  Incarna¬ 
tion  or  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  consisting  in  repeating  the 
Angelic  Salutation  fifty  times  in  each  division.  And  this 


*  Be  VirgirdtatG  Sanctce  Maria. 


f  In  Psalmum,  xliv. 


BEAUTIFUL  SIGNIFICATION  OF  THE  BOS  ARY.  217 

they  did  in  order  to  proclaim  thereby  their  living,  loving 
faith  in  Him  whom  all  the  Psalms  and  other  inspired  writ¬ 
ings  foretell  and  proclaim  as  the  Father  of  the  world  to 
come,  while  they  saluted  at  the  same  time  with  heartfelt 
reverence  the  Mother  whom  they  could  not  dissociate  from 
him  in  life  or  in  death,  on  earth  or  in  heaven. 

Thus,  in  the  age  of  St.  Bede  (the  venerable),  who  died  in 
733,  this  manner  of  praying  prevailed  all  throughout  France 
and  England.  “  The  beads  used  to  be  suspended  with  ven¬ 
eration  in  churches  and  public  places,  for  the  accommoda¬ 
tion  of  all  who  wished  to  use  them.  We  read  of  St.  Eloy 
that  for  a  certain  devout  lady  he  made  a  chair  adorned  with 
one  hundred  and  fifty  gold  and  silver  nails,  that  by  the 
signs  of  the  nails  she  might  repeat  the  Psalter  of  Blessed 
Mary.* 

This  led  step  by  step  to  what  is  known  as  the  Rosary,  a 
most  beautiful  form  of  mental  and  vocal  prayer,  perfected 
by  St.  Dominick  in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  which  has 
ever  been  so  dear  to  all  Catholic  homes  and  hearts. 

Chivalrous  Zeal  for  the  Spread  of  God’’  s  Kingdom. 

So,  all  this  sweet  and  devout  thought  of  the  mysteries  of 
Christ’s  life, — this  familiar  contemplation  of  the  three  great 
figures  of  Jesus,  Mary,  and  Joseph  in  the  studied  story  of 
our  redemption,  begot  in  souls,  together  with  the  love  of 
purity,  reverence  for  woman,  and  a  mighty  desire  to  imitate 
and  glorify  the  Redeemer,  by  spreading  his  faith  and  his 
reign  in  all  lands. 

Although  the  age  of  chivalry  has  passed  away,  and,  it  is 
thought,  the  spirit  which  animated  it  has  disappeared  for 
ever  with  the  institution  itself,  yet  the  general  favor  shown 
in  our  age  for  the  works  in  prose  and  poetry  which  set  forth 
the  glories  of  ancient  knighthood, — would  prove  that  this 
spirit  is  still  a  living  reality.  Thank  God,  we  know  it  to 
be  such  wherever  in  the  English-speaking  world  the  beauti- 


*Digby,  “  Compitum,”  book  ii.,  cb.  ix. 


218  TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

i 

ful  productions  of  tlie  Bard  of  Chivalry  *  are  still  read 
with  admiration  by  old  and  young. 

Also  to  Purity  as  the  Brightest  Ornament  of  Chivalry. 

The  piety  begotten  by  this  daily  meditation  of  the  sublime 
mysteries  of  Christ’s  life  and  a  familiar  acquaintance  with 
the  heroic  achievements  of  his  apostles,  martyrs,  and  prin¬ 
cipal  saints,  prompted  men  not  only  to  become  knights  for 
the  protection  of  female  innocence  and  weakness, — for  the 
defense  of  the  Church  and  the  recovery  of  the  Holy  Land 
from  Islam,  and  for  the  extirpation  of  infidel  arid  heretical 
rule, — but  it  also  spurred  men  on  to  such  enterprises  as  the 
recovery  of  the  Holy  Grail, f  when  lost  by  the  sin  of  its 
keepers,  and  to  the  high  and  spotless  purity  which  could 
alone  enable  one  either  to  see  or  to  recover  it. 

The  virgin-knight,  Sir  Galahad,  who  is  privileged  to  re¬ 
cover  and  possess  the  sacred  treasure,  is  the  youngest  of 
the  knights  of  the  Bound  Table  : 

“  ‘  God  made  thee  good  as  thou  art  beautiful,’ 

Said  Arthur,  when  he  dubbed  him  knight.” 

Sir  Percivale  and  his  Saintly  Sister. 

A  nun,  the  sister  of  Sir  Percivale,  himself  a  blameless 
youth,  had  risen  to  such  a  height  of  purity  and  holiness,  by 
her  fervor  in  expiating  by  voluntary  austerity,  the  scandals 
she  heard  of  in  the  outside  world,  that  God  also  granted 
her  to  see  the  Holy  Grail  as  it  was  borne  away  from  its  un¬ 
worthy  guardians  at  Glastonbury.  Says  her  brother : 

“And  so  she  prayed  and  fasted,  till  the  sun  shone. 

And  the  wind  blew  through  her,  and  I  thought 
She  might  have  risen  and  floated  when  I  saw  her. 

*  Tennyson:  see  his  “  Idyls  of  the  King.” 

f  The  Holy  Grail  (French,  Sangreal,  or  Sang  reel,  the  very  blood  of  our  Lord), 
was,  in  the  Arthurian  poetry,  supposed  to  be  the  Cup  which  our  Lord  used  in 
the  Last  Supper,  and  in  which  Joseph  of  Arimathea  had  collected  the  drops  of 
blood  which  fell  from  Christ  on  the  Cross. 


THE  WINE  WHICH  GERMINATES  VIRGINS. 


219 


...  Behold  her  eyes 
Beyond  my  knowing  of  them,  beautiful. 

Beyond  all  knowing  of  them,  wonderful, 

Beautiful  in  the  light  of  holiness.” 

So,  this  saintly  girl,  anxious  only  to  stir  up  in  chosen 
heroic  souls  the  spirit  of  purity  and  self-sacrifice  as  a 
remedy  to  the  social  poison  that  was  leavening  souls  in  the 
world,  chooses  Sir  Galahad  for  her  champion, — the  one 
destined  to  recover  the  Holy  Grail,  the  palladium  of  Eng¬ 
land’s  Christianity.  She  binds  his  sword  around  him  with 
a  belt  she  has  made  herself  : 

“Saying,  ‘My  Knight,  my  love,  my  Knight  of  heaven, 

O  thou,  my  love,  whose  love  is  one  with  mine, 

I,  maiden,  round  thee,  maiden,  bind  my  belt. 

Go  forth  !  for  thou  slialt  see  what  I  have  seen. 

And  break  through  all,  till  One  will  crown  thee  King 
Far  in  the  spiritual  city  :  ’  and  as  she  spake 
She  sent  the  deathless  passion  in  her  eyes 
Through  him,  and  made  him  hers,  and  laid  her  mind 
On  him,  and  he  believed  in  her  belief.” 

Sucli  was  their  conception,  in  these  ages  of  faith,  of  the 
purity  which  adorned  the  souls  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  of  the 
ardor  which  such  holy  wife  could  breathe  into  the  soul  of 
such  holy  husband,  of  the  unearthly  love  which  bound 
them  together  in  promoting  the  interests  of  God  and  His 
Christ :  such  the  spirit  in  which  one  might  imagine  Mary 
addressing  holy  Joseph  and  sending  him  forth  to  “  see  what 
she  has  seen,”  and  to  endure  and  brave  all  labor  and  sulfer- 
ing,  in  following  their  common  Lord  and  Love. 

This  Pure  Spirit  fruitful  in  Great  Men  and  Women. 

What  marvel  that  such  popular  belief  and  piety  begat  so 
many  great  men  and  women  in  every  Christian  land  ?  Take 
that  great  nation,  which  for  eight  hundred  years  was  ever 
in  arms  against  the  domineering  Mohammedan, — Spain. 

“Having  great  examples  of  virtue  in  their  Catholic  kings 
and  princes,” — says  a  writer  who  knew  them  well, — “the 


220 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM . 


Spaniards  in  general  live  in  a  most  Christian  manner.  For 
they  observe  justice  ;  they  observe  the  precepts  of  the 
Church  ;  they  assist  at  the  divine  offices  ;  they  hear  ser¬ 
mons  :  they  venerate  priests  ;  they  respect  elders  ;  they  love 
their  friends  ;  they  injure  no  one  ;  they  console  the  afflict¬ 
ed  ;  they  assist  the  needy ;  they  show  the  right  way  to 
those  who  are  wandering  from  it ;  they  admonish  sinners  ; 
they  pardon  the  penitent  ;  they  keep  faith,  love  the  studi¬ 
ous,  and  hate  the  wicked : — therefore  do  I  prefer  Spain  to 
other  countries.  For  I  am  delighted  with  the  admirable 
morals  of  the  Spaniards,  with  their  singular  urbanity,  their 
noble  customs,  not  alone  those  of  the  knights  and  priests, 
but  also  of  peasants  and  husbandmen.”* 

The  Country  Population  in  Spain  Uncontaminated. 

Nor, — much  as  the  systematic  introduction  of  Voltairian 
skepticism  and  the  prevalence  in  the  cities  of  revolutionary 
doctrines  have  affected  Spanish  institutions  and  manners, — 
has  the  mass  of  the  Spanish  people  been  robbed  of  ances¬ 
tral  faith  and  piety  by  the  successive  social  and  political 
revolutions. 

Do  not  think,  because  the  stream,  as  it  flows  by  the 
crowded  city  or  skirts  the  great  centers  of  industry,  be¬ 
comes  polluted  by  the  manifold  impurities  poured  into  it, 
that  its  waters  have  been  contaminated  throughout  their 
entire  course  and  even  in  their  well-springs. 

We  have  only  to  go 

“  Away  from  city,  smoke,  and  sin, 

Unto  the  solitude  wherein 
The  happy  stream  is  born,” 

and  we  may  be  sure  that  there  we  shall  find  the  air  pure, 
the  crystal  fountain  stainless,  and  all  around  peace  and 
purity. 

“  Hither  the  sunshine  cometh  not, 

But  leafy  branches  shade  the  spot 
Where  sleeps  the  baby  stream  ; 


*  Marinus  Siculus,  Dc  Rebus  Hispanicis,  lib.  v. 


THE  RURAL  HOMES  OF  SPAIN. 


221 


And  here  with  folded  wings  Love  lies, — 

We  feel  his  breathing,  and  our  eyes 
Meet  in  a  happy  dream. 

“  There,  looking  down  upon  its  face. 

We  watch  the  water  in  the  place 
From  whence  it  singing  flows, 

And  picture  sweetly,  while  we  rest, 

A  little  Naiad  in  a  nest, 

Where  the  wild  lily  blows.”  * 

• 

Catholic  Home-Life  Surviving  in  Protestant  Countries . 

We  may  well  console  ourselves,  in  view  of  the  dangers 
with  which  society  and  religion  are  at  present  threatened, 
in  reflecting  that  home-education  in  every  Catholic  land, 
is  still  based  on  this  venerated  ideal  of  our  fathers, — the 
home-life  of  Nazareth.  Even  in  countries,  which  regard 
with  undisguised  hatred  not  only  the  authority  of  the 
Church,  but  the  very  name  of  Catholic, — the  ancient  vir¬ 
tues  and  traditions  of  Catholic  home-life  still  continue  to 
be  cherished.  That  is  a  mercy  of  Him  who  is  Father  over 
all  the  families  of  nations,  and  who,  having  “made  them 
for  health,  .  .  .  there  is  no  poison  of  destruction  in  them,”  f 
for  which  he  has  not  prepared  an  antidote  in  his  own  good 
time.  No  !  the  power  of  evil  is  not  unlimited  ;  nor  is  the 
reign  of  the  Enemy  of  God  and  man  to  endure  forever. 

A  Noble  National  Character . 

Surely  we  have  seen  enough  of  these  blessed  homes  on 
both  sides  of  the  great  ocean,  not  to  feel  secure  of  the 
future,  even  though  the  present  be  full  of  doubt,  and  dan¬ 
ger,  and  fear.  The  greatest  man  ever  born  in  Ireland, 
Edmund  Burke,  wrote  at  the  close  of  the  last  century : 
“The  Castilians  have  still  remaining  a  good  deal  of  their 
old  character,  their  gravidad  (dignity  of  deportment),  leal- 

*  “  Wayside  Poesies.” 

f  Wisdom,  i.  14.  Creavit  enim ,  ut  essent  omnia  :  et  sanaliles  fecit  nationes 
orbis  terrarum  :  et  non  est  in  illis  medicamenium  exterminii,  nee  inferorum  reg- 
num  in  terra. 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


dad  (loyalty),  and  it  timer  de  Dios  (the  fear  of  God).”  This 
is  more  true  even  of  other  provinces  of  Spain  than  of  Cas¬ 
tile.  It  is  true  of  the  whole  rural  population  from  sea  to 
sea.  And  these  noble  characteristic  features, — the  lofty 
self-respect  and  dignified  courtesy,  the  steadfast  loyalty  to 
God,  country,  and  honor,  that  fear  of  God  which  is  not  the 
abject  servility  of  superstition,  but  the  enlightened  senti¬ 
ment  of  that  Majesty  which  rules  and  judges  the  whole 
earth, — all  that  comes  from  the  intimate  knowledge  and 
daily  practice  of  these  great  principles  that  guided  blessed 
Joseph  in  Nazareth,  and  still  form  the  living  law  for  every 
Spanish  father  of  a  family  in  Europe  or  America. 

What  we  most  need  in  our  day  are  men  conscientiously 
and  invincibly  attached  to  principle, — God-fearing,  self- 
res  j>ec  ting,  nobly  independent  while  reverencing  the  rights 
of  others, — incapable  of  betraying  their  conscience,  their 
trust,  or  their  honor  ;  men  uniting  to  the  vigor  of  body 
•  inherited  from  chaste  and  temperate  ancestors  and  sustained 
by  personal  virtue,  to  the  strength  of  soul  which  true  piety 
begets, — that  dignified  and  gentle  courtesy  which  is  only 
the  flower  and  perfume  of  Christian  charity. 

Catholic  faith,  Catholic  piety,  Catholic  home-life  begat 
such  a  nation  of  men  in  glorious  Spain  during  her  long 
struggle  with  the  Moor.  If  the  national  character  degen¬ 
erated,  and  with  it  declined  the  national  greatness, — it  was 
because  other  principles  and  another  life,  hostile  to  their 
ancestral  faith,  penetrated  like  the  miasms  of  a  plague  into 
Spanish  homes,  and  tainted  there  the  atmosphere  which 
Christian  purity  and  piety  ever  generate. 

How  to  Preserve  and  Improve  National  Virtues. 

Would  you  see,  among  the  Spanish  race  at  home  and 
abroad,  the  old  domestic  virtues  flourish  anew,  and  with 
them  revive  the  pristine  glories  of  the  x)roudest  nation  of 
Christendom  ?  Leave  Religion  free  to  set  up  the  ideal  we 
have  been  describing,  and  men  free  to  make  it  a  living 
reality  in  their  homes  and  their  public  conduct ! 


OUR  GREAT  NEED  OF  SUCH  MEN 


223 


We  Catholics,  by  our  degenerate  lives,  are  responsible  for 
much  of  the  evil  which  at  present  afflicts  both  .Religion  and 
Society.  The  sole  remedy  against  its  increase  lies  in  our 
honoring  the  faith  of  our  fathers  by  living  up  to  its  pre¬ 
cepts  and  teachings,  to  the  high  ideal  which  it  holds  up  to 
our  imitation  and  to  the  noblest  of  household  examxiles. 

“  Good  alone  is  good  without  a  name, 

And  tliis  breeds  honor  :  that  is  honor’s  scorn 
Which  challenges  itself  as  honor’s  born, 

And  is  not  like  the  sire  :  honors  best  thrive 
When  rather  from  our  acts  we  them  derive 
Than  our  fore-goers.  The  mere  word ’s  a  slave 
Debauch’d  on  every  tomb  ;  on  every  grave 
A  lying  trophy.’* 


CHAPTER  XII. 


PATERNAL  AUTHORITY  AND  HOME  EDUCATION 

He  that  honoreth  his  father  shall  enjoy  a  long  life ; 

And  he  that  obeyeth  the  father  shall  be  a  comfort  to  his  mother. 

He  that  feareth  the  Lord  honoreth  his  parents. 

And  as  his  masters  will  serve  them  that  brought  him  into  the  world. 

Ecclesiasticus,  iii.  7,  8. 

What  principally  strikes  the  observer  who  studies  the  civilization  of  China, 
and  what  is  in  reality  its  distinctive  feature,  is  the  preponderance  of  paternal 
authority.  Indeed,  this  authority  is  the  chief  tie  of  the  family,  the  funda¬ 
mental  basis  of  government  and  laws,  and  the  very  soul  of  religion  itself.  It 
preserves  domestic  harmony,  feeds  the  spirit  of  obedience  toward  the  public 
authorities,  and  hallows  both  the  memory  of  ancestors  and  the  popular  respect 
for  traditions. 

Filial  piety  is  in  China,  what  the  love  of  freedom  was  in  Greece,  what  love 
of  country  was  in  Rome,  and  what  the  religious  sentiment  was  in  the  Middle 
Ages. — M.  L.  Donnat.* 

The  mightiest  rivers  on  the  surface  of  the  globe  have  their 
source  in  the  highest  mountain  solitudes,  most  frequently 
in  the  vast  snow-tields  which  furnish  them  perennial  waters. 
The  ancient  traditions  of  India  will  have  it  that  the  sacred 
streams  of  the  Indus  and  the  Ganges  rise  at  the  very  foot 
of  the  mountains  that  are  nearest  heaven  and  the  dwelling 
place  of  the  gods. 

So  is  it  with  all  authority  most  revered  among  men,  with 
every  institution  from  which  human  life  and  society  derive 
power,  happiness,  and  stability.  One  has  to  go  back  to  the 
cradle  of  humanity  to  find  their  certain  origin  ; — their  sanc¬ 
tion  must  come  immediately  from  Heaven  itself. 

The  beginnings  of  these  venerable  customs  and  institu¬ 
tions  of  the  vast  Chinese  Empire,  if  traced  back  conscien¬ 
tiously  from  century  to  century,  would  lead  us  to  the  very 

*  Ouvriers  des  Deux  Mondes,  vol.  iv.,  p.  116. 


224 


FILIAL  PIETY  MORE  ANCIENT  THAN  TEE  DECALOGUE .  225 

age  of  Noe  and  his  sons :  the  traditions  on  which  repose  the 
ancestral  worship  of  China,  the  religion  and  moral  life  of 
the  nation  and  of  every  home  within  it,  are  thus  found  to 
be  anterior  to  Moses  and  his  law,  anterior  even  to  Abra¬ 
ham  and  that  Clialdsean  corruption  from  which  the  great 
patriarch  fled. 

Thus  we  can  appreciate  how  ancient  and  universal  was 
the  wisdom  enunciated  by  the  Son  of  Sirach : 

“  He  that  feareth  the  Lord  honoreth  his  parents, 

And  as  his  masters  will  serve  them  that  brought  him  into  the  world.  ” 

That  fear,  full  of  reverence,  submission,  and  love,  which, 
before  the  deluge,  formed  the  religion  of  Seth  and  Henoch, 
flowed  on  through  the  breasts  of  Noe  and  Sem,  to  be  the 
religion  of  the  renovated  human  family.  It  was  the  law  of 
nature,  as  immutable  as  the  Eternal  God, — that  reverence, 
honor,  and  love  for  the  Father  in  Heaven,  should  be  the 
source  of  the  respect,  obedience,  and  affection  which  we  are 
bound  to  show  to  our  parents.  Do  away  with  “the  fear  of 
the  Lord  ’  ’  in  the  hearts  of  children,  and  the  home  will  be¬ 
come  a  ruin.  Let  religion  and  flliai  piety  disappear  from 
the  majority  of  homes  of  a  nation,  and  you  can  safely  pre¬ 
dict  its  extinction.  Just  as  the  vast  regions  watered  by  the 
Indus,  the  Ganges,  the  Amazon,  and  the  Mississippi,  would 
soon  become  a  barren  and  uninhabited  wilderness,  if  their 
sources  in  the  mountains  should  fail,  because  the  winds  of 
heaven  ceased  to  bring  there  either  rainfall  or  snow. 

It  is  then  of  unspeakable  importance  that  this  paternal 
authority,  God-given  as  it  is,  fundamental  as  it  must  be  re¬ 
garded  in  human  society,  should  be  thoroughly  understood 
and  most  religiously  upheld  and  reverenced. 

Were  Christians  to  forget  either  its  origin  or  its  claims, 
they  would  be  reminded  of  both  by  pagans  and  Mohamme¬ 
dans.  Thank  God,  there  is  one  great  society,  one  ever¬ 
present  and  unerring  authority,  which  can  never  cease  to 
reutter  the  divine  precept,  “  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mo¬ 
ther,”  and  to  explain  its  significance  and  scope  to  the 
nations. 


15 


226 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Divine  Origin  of  Paternal  Authority. 

It  is,  then,  the  sentiment  of  the  Church  that  the  father  in 
the  family  derives  his  authority  not  from  the  State,  but  im¬ 
mediately  from  God  himself.  The  family  was  before  the 
State,  which  owes  its  existence  and  derives  its  powers  imme¬ 
diately  from  the  people  or  the  association  of  families  and 
individuals  who  compose  the  people,  and  ultimately  only 
from  God. 

By  no  human  law  or  legislator  can  the  authority  of  the 
father  over  his  children,  and  the  duties  essential  to  his  of¬ 
fice,  be  done  away  with,  confiscated,  or  superseded.  It  is 
the  interest  of  civil  society  and  of  its  legislators  to  lend 
their  aid  to  the  divine  and  natural  law  in  this.  Our  law¬ 
givers,  our  magistrates,  our  voters  would  only  be  playing 
into  the  hands  of  the  socialists,  communists,  and  levelers, 
by  trenching  on  the  father’s  legitimate  authority  within 
his  own  household,  instead  sanctioning  by  their  enactments 
its  rights  and  protecting  its  free  exercise. 

Let  us  once  more  repeat  it  here, — to  abridge  in  the  family 
the  father’ s  authority  over  his  children,  or  to  weaken  in  any 
way  the  unity  and  indissolubility  of  the  marriage  tie, — is  to 
move  the  foundations  of  the  earth  ! 

With  this  warning  we  dismiss,  for  the  present  at  least, 
this  portion  of  our  subject,  and  proceed  to  show  what  is  the 
extent  of  parental  jurisdiction,  and  what  is  the  correspond¬ 
ing  obligation  of  the  father,  or,  in  his  stead,  of  the  mother. 
The  reader, 'of  course,  will  understand  us  to  speak  here  of 
education. 

Education ,  the  Parent  s  indefeasible  Right. 

One  of  the  first  injunctions  laid  on  the  great  Christian 
Society  of  Ephesus,  was,  “  Children,  obey  your  parents  in 
the  Lord  ;  for  this  is  just;”  *  and  then  the  Great  Apostle 
rehearses  the  Mosaic  precept,  continuing  thus  : 


*  Ephesians,  vi.  1. 


THE  FATHER'S  RIGHT  TO  EDUCATE.  227 

“And  you,  fathers,  provoke  not  your  children  to  anger; 
but  bring  them  up  in  the  discipline  and  correction  of  the 
Lord.” 

With  regard  to  the  first  part  of  this  injunction,  we  have 
said  what  is  abundantly  sufficient  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
There  is  no  more  certain  safeguard  against  a  parent’s  pro¬ 
voking  his  children  to  anger, — to  all  the  rebellious  and  pas¬ 
sionate  discontent  which  an  oppressive  use  of  authority 
creates, — than  the  wise,  gentle,  patient,  all-embracing  love, 
and  firm  discipline  described  there.  We  have  now  to  in¬ 
sist  on  the  6  1  bringing  up  in  the  discipline  and  correction  of 
the  Lord,” — that  is,  on  the  duty  of  education, — Christian 
education,  as  is  evident  from  the  very  words  of  the  apostle. 

And  now,  dear  reader,  do  not  be  alarmed  at  this  begin¬ 
ning,  as  if  we  meant  to  inflict  on  your  patience  a  long  lec¬ 
ture  or  sermon  on  the  training  of  childhood  and  youth. 
What  we  have  to  say  is  exceedingly  practical,  and  had  bet¬ 
ter,  therefore,  be  said  briefly.  It  is  also  exceedingly  impor¬ 
tant,  and  must  be  said  clearly.  At  any  rate  we  shall  do  our 
best  to  tell  pleasantly  a  tale  so  often  told,  and  requiring, 
nevertheless,  perpetual  and  conscientious  repetition. 

The  object  which  the  great  Christian  apostle  had  in  view 
in  insisting  upon  bringing  up  children  “in  the  discipline 
and  correction  of  the  Lord,” — was,  undoubtedly,  the  for¬ 
mation  in  them  of  habits  of  supernatural  virtue, — such  vir¬ 
tue  having  its  standard  of  excellence  in  the  life  and  teach¬ 
ing  of  Christ. 

This, — as  being  in  reality  Christian  education, — is  to  be 
most  carefully  distinguished  from  mere  instruction  in  let¬ 
ters  or  in  worldly  knowledge.  Our  remarks,  in  this  chap¬ 
ter,  shall  apply  to  both  the  one  and  the  other, — keeping 
very  distinct  before  the  mind  of  the  reader,  the  parent’s 
office  in  forming  the  character  and  molding  the  soul  to 
Christ-like  goodness,  from  the  function  of  training  the 
mind  to  the  acquisition  of  knowledge  and  science. 

The  author,  during  many  years  of  his  life,  has  been  occu¬ 
pied  in  the  duty  of  teaching ;  he  is,  therefore,  deeply  im¬ 
pressed  with  the  importance  of  the  teacher’s  functions  at 


228 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


all  times,  and  especially  in  his  own  age  and  country.  He 
lias  also  been  all  his  life  a  keen  student,  seeking  to  com¬ 
plete  the  early  knowledge  given  him  in  one  of  the  foremost 
institutions  in  America,  by  serious  studies  undertaken  in 
advanced  manhood — undertaken,  too,  with  the  purpose  of 
benefiting  American  youth.  He  will  not,  then,  be  sus- 
jiected  of  undervaluing  modern  methods  or  their  results,  or 
of  holding  cheap  the  science  of  the  age,  the  ripest  fruits  of 
which  he  has  sought  so  laboriously  in  the  best  schools  of 
both  hemispheres. 

Of  scientific  and  literary  studies  he  will  treat  after  he  has 
said  here  what  a  long  experience  and  deep  conviction  urge 
him  to  say  on  education  proper,  as  distinguished  from  in¬ 
struction. 

What  Education  is. 

r 

Under  the  Christian  religion,  man,  regenerated  by  bap¬ 
tism,  is  taught  that  the  entire  race  is  called  in  Christ  to  a 
supernatural  destiny,  through  the  profession  of  a  supernat¬ 
ural  faith,  the  practice  of  supernatural  virtues,  and  the  use 
of  divine  ordinances,  that  are  supernatural  in  their  aims 
and  effects.  It  is  the  sacred  and  indispensable  duty  of 
every  Christian  father  to  live  up  to  this  belief  himself,  and 
to  see  to  it  that  his  children  are  educated  up  to  it. 

On  this  point  the  Church  has  spoken  clearly,  emphati¬ 
cally,  definitely :  so,  there  is  no  room  for  questioning  her 
mind  and  purpose  thereon.  We  only  insist  on  it  here,  be¬ 
cause,  in  our  own  country,  as  elsewhere,  the  right  and  duty 
of  the  parent  are  made  to  conflict  with  what  is  called  the 
right  of  the  State.  Let  it  suffice  that  the  same  St.  Paul  has 
said  elsewhere :  *  “If  any  man  have  not  care  of  his  own, 
and  especially  of  those  of  his  house,  he  hath  denied  the 
faith,  and  is  worse  than  an  infidel.”  Is  it  not  a  confirma¬ 
tion  of  the  charge  given  so  many  ages  before  that  to  the 
fathers  in  Israel,  ‘  ‘  Lay  up  these  my  words  in  your  hearts 
and  minds,  and  hang  them  for  a  sign  on  your  hands,  and 
place  them  between  your  eyes.  Teach  your  children  that 

*  1  Timothy,  v.  8. 


THE  STATE  SHOULD  UPHOLD  THE  PARENT'S  RIGHT.  229 


they  meditate  on  them”  And  again,  at  a  period  much 
nearer  the  Christian  era,  “Hast  thou  children?  Instruct 
them,  and  bow  down  their  [neck]  from  their  childhood.”  f 

The  Christian  generation  of  the  nineteenth  century  be¬ 
lieve  and  affirm  that  it  is  their  right  and  their  duty  to  form 
their  children  from  infancy  to  the  knowledge  of  “the  truth 
as  it  is  in  Christ  Jesus,”  and  to  the  perfect  imitation  of  his 
virtues.  The  injunctions  of  the  apostle,  and  the  Divine 
Will  revealed  and  declared  through  him,  they  believe  to  be 
addressed  not  to  the  State  or  the  civil  magistrate,  but  to 
every  father  in  his  place  and  office  as  head  and  master  in 
his  household.  The  obligation  of  seeing  to  it  that  parents 
do  comply  with  this  duty,  has  been  imposed  on  those  whom 
“the  Holy  Ghost  hath  placed  .  .  .  bishops,  to  rule  the 
church  of  God,”  and  in  a  special  manner  on  him  who  is, 
under  Christ,  Shepherd  of  the  whole  flock,  and  whose  office 
it  is  to  feed  both  the  lambs  and  the  sheep.  The  mainte- 
ance  and  development  of  Christian  life,  as  such,  is  the  care 
of  the  Christian  Society,  the  Church, — not  of  the  Civil  So¬ 
ciety,  only  in  so  far  as  the  Church  requires  and  accepts  its 
cooperation. 

So  much  for  the  duty  of  the  parent  in  Christian  educa¬ 
tion, — as  well  as  its  correlative,  the  right  to  educate.  As  to 
its  exercise,  we  need  not  say  much.  It  is  the  province  of 
the  mother  to  train  and  to  form, — it  is  that  of  the  father  to 
sustain  and  aid  her  with  the  whole  weight  of  his  authority 
and  sympathy.  Where  both  parents  are  true  practical  Chris¬ 
tians,  united  in  mind  and  heart  in  this  the  most  essential 
part  of  their  work, — though  they  may  not  have  much  of 
worldly  learning  or  worldly  means, — they  will  be  sure  to 
bring  up  their  children  well. 

As,  however,  we  devote  a  special  chapter  to  “Education 
in  the  home  of  the  laboring  man  and  the  unlettered,” — we 
must  now  give  some  practical  advice  on  parental  duty  in 
directing  or  superintending  the  education  of  children  both 
in  the  home  or  in  institutions  outside  the  home. 


*  Deuteronomy,  xi.  19. 


f  Ecclesiasticus,  vii.  25. 


230 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


I.  Home  Education . 

Where  the  atmosphere  of  the  home  is  pure  and  healthful 
to  soul  and  body, — though  it  may  be  neither  the  abode  of 
wealth  nor  that  of  culture, — its  influence  on  the  spiritual 
growth  of  the  child  is  most  salutary.  For  both  the  interior 
and  the  exterior  man  may  grow  to  all  goodness  and  loveli¬ 
ness  even  in  the  cottage  of  the  field-laborer,  the  shepherd,  or 
the  peasant,  as  we  read  of  David  growing  up  beneath  the 
roof  of  Jesse,  of  the  Blessed  Peter  Favre  developing  all  his 
most  amiable  and  most  admirable  qualities  of  soul  while 
pasturing  the  flocks  of  his  father  and  uncle  on  the  moun¬ 
tains  of  Savoy, — like  the  exquisite  and  sweet-scented  flow¬ 
ers  of  his  native  Alpine  solitudes,  unfolding  all  their  loveli¬ 
ness  amid  barren  crags  and  perpetual  snows  A 

Nothing  can  ever  wholly  take  the  place  of  the  blessed  and 
manifold  influences  which  the  daily  words  and  actions  of 
father  and  mother,  their  very  bearing  and  manners,  and  the 
mysterious  but  all-powerful  action  of  the  very  air  that  good 
people  breathe,  exercise  on  the  children  that  grow  up 
around  them.  The  earth  retains  throughout  the  longest  and 
severest  winter,  even  when  all  is  covered  with  deep  snow, 
some  portion  of  the  vital  heat  received  from  the  sun  in 
summer  ;  and  we  know  that,  even  after  the  sun  has  set  and 
during  all  the  hours  of  the  darkest  night,  the  air  retains  the 
most  precious  qualities  of  what  is  called  diffused  light ;  and 
thus  beneath  the  frost  and  the  snow  will  the  germs  of  all 
the  earth’s  beauty  and  wealth  continue  to  bide  the  return 
of  spring ;  thus,  too,  through  the  midnight  darkness  all 
living  things  in  field  and  forest  will  continue  to  grow  till 
dawn  once  more  brings  back  the  sun. 

We  have,  at  the  moment  we  write,  one  of  these  obscure, 
laborious,  but  most  blessed  homes  quite  near  us,  where  the 
children,  amid  the  silent,  gentle,  but  most  powerful  influ¬ 
ence  of  their  parents’  and  grand-parents’  homely  virtues  and 

*  See  in  “The  Life  of  the  Blessed  Peter  Favre  ”  (London,  1873),  the  early 
training  of  one  of  the  greatest  men  of  the  sixteenth  century. 


HOME-TEACHING  FIRST;  BOOK-LEARNING  NEXT.  231 

example,  all  grow  up  to  that  upright,  innocent,  and  hon¬ 
orable  type  of  manhood  and  womanhood,  that  so  vividly 
brings  before  us  the  dear  homes  of  another  land.  Yes,  yes, 
— there  is  a  teaching  more  eloquent  than  the  lessons  of  the 
most  accomplished  masters  and  mistresses,  an  education 
more  congenial  to  man’ s  higher  nature,  more  beneficial  to 
the  growth  of  every  faculty  of  soul  and  every  power  of 
body,  than  all  the  book-learning,  and  all  the  scientific  gym¬ 
nastics  of  the  schools. 

It  is  not  that  we  do  not  prize  the  latter  at  its  very  highest 
worth,  but  that  we  consider  the  influence  and  training  of  a 
father  and  a  mother  in  whom  the  Spirit  of  God  dwells,  and 
who  bring  up  their  dear  ones  according  to  the  instincts  of 
that  Spirit,  to  be  the  sole  mighty  agency  of  nature,  mightily 
seconded  by  nature’ s  God,  for  the  unfolding  of  all  that  is 
noblest  in  the  human  soul. 

The  Home- Formation  prepares  the  Substance  of  the  Soul. 

This  first  education  of  the  child  in  the  paternal  home,  is 
one  that  lays  the  foundation  of  all  future  greatness  ;  just  as 
the  neglect  of  such  education,  or  a  perverse  and  vicious 
one,  is  the  source  of  all  the  failures,  the  misery,  the  guilt, 
and  ruin  of  after-life.  This  first  formation  ( creation  the 
old  Catholic  language  termed  it)  gives  to  the  soul  its  “grit,” 
as  well  its  shape :  it  never  loses  either  the  mold  or  the 
temper  then  imparted  to  it.  Like  the  magnificent  Japanese 
vases  seen  at  our  Centennial  Exposition,  the  exquisite 
designs,  wrought,  after  the  casting  of  the  vase,  into  its  sub¬ 
stance,  or  the  no  less  marvelously  beautiful  scenes  inlaid  on 
the  bronze  itself  in  gold  or  silver  or  color,  are  the  work  of 
an  artist  other  than  the  potter.  Thus  the  first  formation  of 
the  soul  and  the  character  in  the  home  and  by  the  creative 
influence  of  the  parents  and  of  the  whole  atmosphere  around 
them, — is  like  the  casting  of  the  vase.  It  gets  its  form,  its 
molding  in  these  early  years ; — the  second  education  of 
the  schools,  and  the  final  education  in  the  world  amid  pro¬ 
fessional  business  and  the  battle  of  life,  may  be  compared 


232 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


to  the  designing,  the  inlaying,  the  enameling,  the  chasing, 
and  the  coloring  bestowed  on  the  molded  form  to  make  it 
in  every  way  perfect  and  admirable.  This  extraordinary 
wealth  of  ornamentation,  however,  is  only  lavished  on  ves¬ 
sels  made  of  the  -best  materials.  Where  the  metal  is  base, 
or  where  there  is  a  flaw,  the  artist  will  not  attempt  to  carry 
*  out  elaborate  and  costly  designs,  for  the  imperfect  or  un¬ 
worthy  vessel  will  not  bear  them. 

At  any  rate,  the  action  of  virtuous  and  intelligent  parents, 
during  this  flrst  process  of  education,  may  be  most  aptly 
likened  to  the  hidden,  slow,  but  wonderful  action  of  nature 
in  forming  the  most  precious  marbles  or  the  rarest  gems ; 
the  marbles  of  Paros  and  Carrara,  out  of  which  Art  has 
fashioned  its  masterpieces,  are  composed  of  the  same  sub¬ 
stance  as  the  commonest  limestone,  just  as  the  diamond  is 
identical  in  composition  with  pure  coal  or  charcoal.  By  the 
action  of  laws,  whose  secret  is  known  to  the  Divine  Author 
of  all  things, — the  beautiful  marble  is  prepared  by  the  hand 
of  nature  and  made  ready  for  the  hand  of  the  sculptor, 
just  as  the  diamond  is  crystallized  in  Nature’s  own  secret 
laboratory,  where  no  human  eye  has  ever  witnessed  the 
process,  and  laid  up  for  the  skill  of  the  jeweler  to  polish 
and  to  set  it. 

We  repeat  it,  the  influence  and  the  action  of  the  best  of 
parents  in  forming  the  soul  and  life  of  their  dear  ones,  is  in 
accordance  with  the  laws  of  nature,  with  His  will  who  is  its 
creator  and  lawgiver ;  it  is  therefore  strictly  natural ;  and 
even  in  following  the  higher  impulses  of  supernatural  grace, 
this  formation  does  not  cease  to  be  natural  in  the  full  and 
comprehensive  sense  in  which  the  Christian  philosopher 
understands  it. 

This  formation  makes  the  marble  marble,  and  not  lime  ; 
makes  the  diamond  diamond,  and  not  coal-dust.  The  soul 
of  the  child  receives  therefrom  its  quality  and  its  form  ; 
the  education  which  follows  only  gives  polish,  design,  orna¬ 
ment,  and  setting.  • 


INFINITE  REVERENCE  DUE  TO  CHILDREN 


233 


Infinite  Reverence  due  to  Children . 

Hence,  parents  cannot  be  too  careful  and  wary  in  all  that 
relates  to  tlie  early  training  of  their  children.  There  is  not 
an  action,  a  word,  a  tone,  a  look,  that  is  not  observed  by 
these  wonderfully  attentive  little  eyes  ;  and  not  a  thing  ob¬ 
served  that  is  not  remembered  for  a  time  at  least.  Every¬ 
thing  in  the  parents  influences  these  sensitive  plants  ;  every¬ 
thing  in  the  home, — its  comfort  or  discomfort,  its  cleanli¬ 
ness  or  uncleanness  ;  the  pictures  on  the  walls,  the  very 
furniture  and  its  arrangement,  all  exercise  a  subtle  but 
most  undoubted  action  on  the  senses  of  these  tender  ones. 
Like  the  self-registering  instruments  of  our  observatories, 
they  receive  and  retain  impressions  made  by  all  the  phe¬ 
nomena  of  earth  and  air  ;  and  because  these  impressions 
act  upon  the  secret  springs  of  nature  in  the  soul,  life’s 
center,  the  action  produces  results  that  are  permanent, 
sometimes  everlasting. 

Indeed,  it  is  because  the  soul  of  man  partakes  of  the 
nature  of  the  Infinite  and  Eternal,  that  parents  should  be 
so  solicitous  about  every  teaching  and  every  impression 
given  to  their  infant  children.  It  is  ascertained  that  there 
are  trees  in  our  American  forests  that  live  for  upward  of  a 
thousand  years  ;  the  English  yew  tree  lives  longer  than 
this,  and  we  know  not  but  others  may  be  endowed  with 
still  greater  longevity.  Thus  the  impression  made  on  one 
of  these  saplings,  the  twist  given  to  it,  the  mark  set  upon 
it,  will  remain  forever  on  the  tree’ s  substance,  and  outlive 
in  duration  kingdoms  and  empires. 

Your  child’s  soul  is  destined  to  outlive  the  sun  in  the 
heavens,  to  live  with  God,  sharing  His  life,  His  glory,  His 
bliss  throughout  all  the  unimagined  countless  cycles  of 
•  ernity.  This  is  elementary  Christian  truth.  There  is  not 
an  imj>ression  you  make  on  the  soul  of  your  babe, — for 
good  or  for  evil, — that  is  not  of  itself  destined  to  be  ever¬ 
lasting.  There  is  not  a  direction  or  inclination  your  teach¬ 
ing  or  your  neglect  gives  to  that  tender  soul,  but  will  per- 


234 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


sist  beyond  the  grave.  There  is  no  lesson  of  yours,  no 
matter  how  imparted, — by  words,  or  actions,  or  the  influ¬ 
ence  of  your  life  and  your  home, — but  is  of  infinite  impor¬ 
tance  to  your  child’ s  welfare,  of  eternal  consequence  ’to  its 
greatness  here  and  hereafter.  We  say  “  hereafter,” — for  it 
is  only  in  the  Eternal  City  that  man  attains  to  the  full  per¬ 
fection  of  manhood.  Eternal  life  is  the  autumn  of  humani¬ 
ty,  the  golden  season  of  maturity  and  perpetual  fruition. 

What  Seeds  should  be  sown  in  Young  Hearts. 

When,  therefore,  you,  O  Father,  encourage  and  aid  your 
wife,  in  every  way  that  your  countenance,  cooperation,  and 
sympathy  can,  in  sowing  in  your  child’s  heart  the  first 
seeds  of  generosity,  self-denial,  devotion  to  the  welfare  and 
happiness  of  others, — the  early  love  and  fear  of  God,  the 
sense  of  duty  and  inflexible  honor,  the  horror  of  all  that  is 
untruthful,  hypocritical,  and  time-serving ;  you  are  sowing 
seeds  of  immortality. 

“  I  wonder  did  you  ever  count 
Tlie  value  of  one  human  fate  ; 

Or  sum  the  infinite  amount 
Of  one  heart’s  treasures,  and  the  weight 
Of  Life’s  one  venture,  and  the  whole 
Concentrate  purpose  of  a  soul.  ”  * 

We  have  seen  gardeners  in  France,  where  common  wine 
is  so  plenty,  employ  it  to  water  certain  favorite  plants, 
because  the  generous  liquid  imparts  to  the  flowers  a  richer 
hue.  We  have  heard  of  persons  in  tropical  climates  in¬ 
jecting  the  living  tree  with  some  deep  coloring  matter,  in 
order  that  such  precious  woods  as  mahogany  might  by  this 
process  receive  a  deeper  and  more  beautiful  tint.  Indeed, 
modern  chemistry  has  found  means  of  injecting  the  veins  of 
wood  employed  in  certain  important  constructions  with  a 
liquid  that  will  jmevent  the  wood  from  decaying  and  crum¬ 
bling  away. 


*  Adelaide  Anne  Procter. 


CHILDREN  SHOULD  BE  KEPT  ANGELIC. 


235 


All  these  industries  of  the  gardener,  the  merchant,  and 
the  mechanic,  will  help  a  thoughtful  parent  to  understand 
what  undying  and  varied  beauty,  what  priceless  qualities 
of  mind  and  heart,  what  immortal  vigor  and  virtue, — can 
be  imparted  to  the  soul  of  a  child  by  the  careful  and  con¬ 
scientious  culture  of  father  and  mother, — by  Home-Edu¬ 
cation. 

Special  Advice  to  Fathers. 

We  must  not  repeat  here  the  instructions  given  to  mothers 
on  this  important  subject.*  As,  however,  the  father’s  au¬ 
thority  is  paramount  in  the  family,  and  as  he  before  all  and 
above  all  is  responsible  for  the  vicious  education  given  in 
the  household,  we  are  bound  to  direct  his  attention  to  some 
few  points  of  no  little  moment. 

Let  him  see  to  it  that  there  be  in  the  house  neither  pic¬ 
tures,  statues,  nor  books,  unworthy  of  meeting  the  eye  of 
innocent  childhood  and  chaste-souled  youth.  Parents  too 
often  need  to  be  reminded  that  the  first  and  incomparably 
the  most  essential  purity,  is  that  of  the  soul — of  the  mind, 
memory,  and  imagination.  So  many  young  people  of  both 
sexes  grow  up  around  us  to  beautiful  manhood  and  woman¬ 
hood  without  ever  having  had  a  thought  or  a  suspicion  of 
evil  cross  their  mind  or  fancy  !  One  feels,  in  presence  of 
these  spotless  souls,  as  if  one  beheld  an  angel  descended 
from  Paradise,  surrounded  with  an  atmosphere  of  heavenly 
light  and  fragrance. 

There  is  no  father,  who  in  his  heart  of  hearts  does  not  most 
devoutly  wish  that  his  little  sons  and  daughters  may  grow 
up  in  this  ignorance  of  all  that  can  stain  soul  or  body,  as 
well  as  in  the  knowledge  and  practice  of  all  the  virtues  and 
graces,  that  can  make  innocence  itself  tenfold  attractive  and 
powerful  for  good.  Innocence  is  the  virgin  gold  without 
alloy  or  blemish  ;  the  added  virtues  and  graces  are  the 
exquisite  form  given  to  the  gold,  the  chaste  designs  and 
enameling  that  embellish,  and  the  gems  that  enrich  it. 
The  soul  thus  kept  pure,  and  then  perfected  by  every 


*  See  “  The  Mirror  of  True  Womanhood.” 


236 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


manly  or  womanly  virtue,  and  further  adorned  by  all  the 
graces  and  accomplishments  of  education, — is  a  vessel  into 
which  God  may  pour  His  Spirit,  and  which  He  may  use  for 
all  His  most  gracious  purposes. 

JVo  Vile  Pictures  or  Bootes  in  the  Home. 

It  behooves,  therefore,  every  enlightened  father,  to  ban¬ 
ish  from  his  house  the  vile  pictures  and  the  still  more  vile 
literature  of  the  day.  It  is  one  of  the  deep  schemes  of  the 
atheistical  and  social  revolutionists,  of  our  times,  to  publish 
in  the  cheapest  and  most  attractive  forms  books  of  every 
description  aiming  at  implanting  corruption  both  in  the 
mind  and  in  the  heart  of  the  popular  masses, — of  boys  and 
girls,  particularly. 

There  are  works  of  fiction  written  in  the  most  enchanting 
form,  every  one  of  which  is  based  on  some  theory  hostile 
to  religion,  subversive  of  conjugal  fidelity,  of  filial  piety  and 
parental  authority,  and  illustrated  by  romantic  incidents, 
that  are  as  sure  to  deaden  or  to  kill  innocence  in  the  soul, 
as  slow  doses  of  arsenic  or  strychnine  are  certain  to  destroy 
within  a  given  time  the  life  of  the  body. 

The  revolutionists  of  Europe  showed  a  diabolical  skill  in 
conveying  into  the  homes  of  the  people  whom  they  wished 
to  dechristianize  and  corrupt  before  they  made  them  ripe 
for  insurrection,  these  antichristian  and  antisocial  romances 
at  a  mere  nominal  price,  and  these  cheap  and  exquisitely 
illustrated  works  in  which  all  that  was  most  sacred  was 
caricatured,  and  all  that  had  hitherto  been  deemed  pure  and 
chaste  was  profaned  and  defiled. 

» 

Deadly  Influence  of  Bad  Boohs  in  France . 

We  remember,  at  Laval  and  Amiens,  in  France,  to  have 
watched  on  Saturday  evenings,  young  working-men  and 
women  forming  long  files  before  some  cheap  book-store, 
where  these  productions  were  sold  or  lent  for  a  mere  trifle, 
to  be  taken  home  and  fed  upon  for  several  days  or  the  en- 


GUILT  INCURRED  IN  CIRCULATING  THEM. 


237 


tire  ensuing  week, — filling  the  whole  soul  with  the  intoxi¬ 
cating  fumes  of  the  rankest  impiety  and  the  most  unblush¬ 
ing  licentiousness.  We  knew  then  what  fruits  would  come 
of  this  devil’s  husbandry  ;  and  has  not  France  reaped  them  % 
and  are  they  not,  at  this  moment,  preparing  to  gather 
another  harvest  of  civil  strife,  social  convulsion,  and  anti- 
christian  hatred,  such  as,  perhaps,  the  world  has  never  yet 
seen  ? 

French  Novels  the  SouVs  Poison. 

Is  it  not  notorious  that  French  novels,  and  indeed,  the 
whole  of  the  lighter  literature  of  France,  breathe  a  spirit 
deadly  to  the  souls  of  the  readers  and  to  all  the  virtues  on 
which,  in  our  midst  till  now,  family  happiness  and  purity 
were  founded  ?  One  thing  of  late  has  filled  us  with  equal 
astonishment  and  alarm, — that  our  most  distinguished  pub¬ 
lishing  houses  should  so  far  forget  their  own  high  position, 
the  esteem  in  which  they  were  held  by  the  public,  and  the 
reverence  they  owed  both  to  the  religion  they  profess  and 
the  morality  of  Christian  families, — as  to  translate  and  cir¬ 
culate  the  infinitely  dangerous  productions  of  Georges  Sand 
and  the  most  seductive  French  and  German  novelists. 
Surely  this  is  worse  than  the  crime  attributed,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  to  a  fanatical  partisan  during  our  late  civil  war, 
who  purchased  abroad  in  every  center  of  pestilential  dis¬ 
ease,  the  garments  of  the  dead  victims,  imported  and  scat¬ 
tered  them  among  our  most  populous  cities,  that  a  multi¬ 
plicity  of  plagues  might  effect  what  armies  could  not  on 
the  battle-field, — the  ruin  of  our  people. 

Guilt  incurred  in  Circulating  them. 

These  publishing  houses  themselves  are  loud  in  condemn¬ 
ing  our  “Dime  Novels”  and  filthy  illustrated  papers. 
But  we  do  not  hesitate  to  affirm,  that  beneath  the  enchant¬ 
ing  style  of  the  pestilential  works  of  fiction  which  they 
popularize  in  our  midst,  a  worse  poison  is  prepared  for  the 
unsupecting  mind  of  youth,— than  in  the  worst  of  “Dime 


238 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


Novels.”  Each  is  a  curse  to  our  people  ;  the  French  novel 
a  tenfold  curse  to  our  American  homes  with  their  traditional 
beliefs  and  noble  ancestral  virtues.  And  will  the  propaga¬ 
tion  of  this  curse  among  the  Christian  families  and  chaste 
youth  of  America,  bring  a  blessing  on  the  publishers,  or  on 
those  who  lend  their  pens  to  the  vile  work  of  translation  \ 

It  is  for  fathers  of  families, — the  God-fearing  men  whom 
this  book  will  reach, — to  exclude  these  poisonous  and  pesti¬ 
lential  books  from  their  homes.  This  rigorous  exclusion 
becomes,  at  present,  more  than  ever  necessary.  For  it  has 
of  late  become  the  fashion  to  issue  in  the  cheapest  form  the 
most  attractive  books  in  the  whole  range  of  English  litera¬ 
ture.  Of  these  “Libraries,”  as  they  are  designated,  some 
may  be  more  free  from  objection  than  others  ;  but,  for  indis¬ 
criminate  use,  in  the  hands  of  young  people,  of  children 
especially,  all  are  most  objectionable. 

Keep  them  out  of  your  children’s  hands, — keep  them  out 
of  your  homes. 

Some  of  our  Catholic  publishers,  anxious  to  provide  an 
antidote  as  cheap  and  as  attractive  to  the  taste  as  the 
poisonous  intellectual  food  of  these  “libraries,” — are  pub¬ 
lishing  popular  and  cheap  editions  of  the  masterpieces  of 
Catholic  writers.  May  God  prosper  their  enterprise,  and 
increase  a  hundred-fold  their  own  means  of  doing  good  ! 

Danger  of  promiscuous  Newspaper  reading. 

\  *  ,  I  ,  ;  rj 

The  same  precautions  and  watchfulness  should  be  used 
by  Christian  parents,  in  a  very  great  measure,  in  the  choice 
of  newspapers  and  periodicals.  We  are  not  afraid  that  any 
truly  enlightened  journalist  shall  take  us  to  task  upon  this 
subject.  No  parent, — we  would  venture  to  affirm, — could 
be  more  strict  in  excluding  from  his  home  and  from  the 
hands  of  his  children,  both  the  vile  literature  we  have  been 
describing,  and  the  indiscriminate  use  of  the  daily  and 
periodical  productions  of  the  Press, — than  several  distin¬ 
guished  journalists  well  known  to  us.  Newspapers  are  only 
for  men  engaged  in  the  active  business  of  the  world.  They 


CHEAP  CATHOLIC  LITERATURE. 


239 


take  from  the  columns  of  the  daily  journal  what  is  to  their 
own  immediate  purpose,  and  let  the  rest  go.  Third  or 
fourth-rate  politicians  alone  find  in  editorial  disquisitions 
the  intellectual  food  they  crave  for.  But  children  and 
young  people  are  not  politicians.  And  may  their  good  an¬ 
gels  long  keep  them  out  of  the  miry  paths  of  politics  ! 

Besides, — there  is  no  worse  school  for  the  mind  than  our 
daily  papers.  The  cheap  and  very  imperfect  knowledge  to 
be  found  there  on  such  a  multiplicity  of  subjects,  only  taxes 
the  memory,  without  exercising  the  intellect  and  the  judg¬ 
ment.  The  superficial  learning  thus  easily  acquired,  will 
prevent  a  man  from  applying  himself  seriously  to  method¬ 
ical  study.  What  such  learners  gain  in  surface  they  lose 
in  depth.  They  never  attain  to  real  science  on  any  sub¬ 
ject.  There  is  a  worse  injury  done  to  the  mind  than  this, — 
it  is  to  unfix  its  firmest  beliefs  and  notions,  to  leave  it  with¬ 
out  strong  convictions  or  lofty  principles.  For,  it  is  very 
hard  for  a  young  man'  to  read,  day  after  day,  misrepresen¬ 
tations  of  his  baptismal  faith  and  the  dearest  objects  of  his 
veneration ;  to  see  the  principles  he  has  been  taught  to  con¬ 
sider  as  immovable  as  the  foundations  of  the  earth,  laughed 
at  as  superannuated,  or  absurd,  or  illusory,  without  finding 
all  firm  ground  of  respect  and  belief  swept  from  beneath 
him. 

Let  parents  believe  us,  then, — the  later  in  life  their  sons 
betake  them  to  reading  much  of  the  newspapers,  the  better 
for  their  minds,  their  hearts,  and  their  fortune,  as  well ! 

Be  your  Sons’  Companions. 

This  is  the  proper  place  for  recommending  to  fathers  to 
make  themselves  the  companions  of  their  grown-up  sons. 
Of  the  watchfulness  to  be  exercised  by  a  good  mother  in 
order  to  keep  her  boys  from  dangerous  associations,  the 
author  has  written  at  length  in  another  work,*  and  he  ear¬ 
nestly  requests  fathers  to  ponder  seriously  the  advice  there 

*  See  “The  Mirror  of  True  Womanhood,”  chapters  xiv.  and  xv.,  pages 
217-290. 


240 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


given.  It  is  so  desirable  that  both  parents  should  be  guided 
in  this  vital  matter,  by  the  same  rules  !  As  we  have  already 
said,  it  must  be  the  father’s  delight  as  well  as  his  duty  to 
make  the  mother’ s  will  the  supreme  law  in  this  respect. 

But  we  find  it  impossible  to  turn  our  back  on  this  part  of 
our  subject,  without  again  beseeching  every  father  who 
takes  up  this  book,  to  make  every  effort,  every  sacrifice  of 
his  own  rest,  and  comfort,  in  order  to  make  his  sons  and 
daughters  find  at  home  all  the  amusement  and  recreation 
they  need,  and  in  order,  as  well,  to  share  all  the  out-door 
amusements  of  his  grown-up  children. 

Dearest  reader,  whoever  you  are,  we  suppose  you  to  have 
nothing  in  this  world  so  much  at  heart,  as  the  making  of 
your  own  home  the  sweet  paradise  to  which  you  long  to 
come  back,  whenever  business  or  duty  keeps  you  away  for 
a  time,  and  out  of  which  you  never  go  without  regretting 
the  necessity  that  impels  you.  Is  it  not  to  have  one  such  a 
sweet  spot  on  earth  that  you  have  labored  late  and  early  %  Is 
not  the  creation  of  such  a  true  home — a  true  heart-rest — the 
reward  you  most  covet  for  all  your  labors  and  trials  on  this 
side  of  the  grave  \  Then  do  your  utmost  to  make  your 
home  to  be  for  your  sons  and  daughters  what  'it  is  for  you, 
the  center  of  all  their  thoughts,  affections,  and  longings. 

Beware  of  Bad  Companions . 

One  poor  young  man’s  terrible  fate  brings,  after  many 
years,  before  our  mind  the  blissful  interior  of  such  a  home, 
and  the  tragic  consequences  of  slighting  a  parent’s  admoni¬ 
tions  about  loose  companions. 

The  victim  in  this  sad  domestic  tragedy  was  in  his  twen¬ 
ty-first  year, — the  son  of  a  man  who  had  begun  by  being  a 
hod-carrier,  then  a  journeyman  mason,  then  a  builder  on 
his  own  account,  and  finally  a  most  successful  speculator  in 
real  estate,  but  in  every  stage  of  his  business  a  man  fearing 
God,  self-reliant,  of  equal  integrity  and  business  capacity, 
honored  and  trusted  by  all  who  knew  him,  and  ever  the 
modest,  unobtrusive  man  he  had  been  from  his  early  youth. 


A  TERRIBLE  EXAMPLE. 


241 


He  had  made  for  himself  and  his  five  children  just  snch  a 
little  home-paradise  as  you  would  expect  the  true  Chris¬ 
tian,  without  pretension  or  love  of  display,  but  with  abun¬ 
dant  means  and  natural  good  taste,  to  create  for  himself. 
Ho  one  knew  how  nruch  of  comfort,  of  goodness,  of  happi¬ 
ness,  and  native  refinement  there  was  in  that  “  nest  of  a 
house,”  but  those  who  partook  of  its  hospitality,  and  they 
were  not  many. 

The  two  oldest  sons  had  been  successively  associated  with 
the  father  in  his  own  thriving  business,  had  been  most  hap¬ 
pily  married,  and  had  gone  forth  from  beneath  the  parental 
roof  to  found  homes  in  every  way  most  like  their  mother’s, 
coming  back  weekly  to  her  to  spend  the  Sunday’s  rest  in 
the  sunshine  of  her  own  delighted  smile  and  her  husband’ s 
proud  affection.  The  youngest  boy, — perhaps  over-petted 
by  his  parents  because  he  was  the  youngest,  had  asked  to 
be  sent  to  college,  and  had  finished  with  credit  his  collegiate 
course.  On  returning  to  his  parents,  he  seemed  to  weary 
of  the  quiet  of  their  home-life, — and,  if  the  truth  must  be 
told, — of  the  companionship  of  his  parents  and  of  his  bro¬ 
thers  and  sisters.  He  had  formed  a  friendship  with  a  col¬ 
lege  companion,  belonging  to  a  family  much  superior  to  his 
own  in  social  position, — and,  in  spite  of  the  anxious  entrea¬ 
ties  of  his  mother  and  the  indignant  remonstrances  of  his 
father,  he  spent  most  of  his  free  time  in  this  friend’s  com¬ 
pany,  and  accepted  even  an  invitation  to  pass  several  weeks 
with  him  on  a  shooting  excursion. 

This  young  gentleman,  the  other,  of  course,  invited  to  his 
father’ s  house  on  their  return.  The  beautiful  young  daugh¬ 
ter  of  the  house,  the  twin-sister  of  our  collegian,  struck  the 
fancy  of  the  fashionable  and  well-born  friend,  and  the  lat¬ 
ter  at  once  resolved  to  make  a  conquest  of  her.  He  was 
handsome,  witty,  accustomed  to  the  best  society,  and  played 
and  sang  charmingly.  The  artless  girl  was  smitten  by  all 
these  accomplishments  as  well  as  by  the  marked  attention 
the  young  visitor  paid  her.  This  happened  on  the  very  first 
night.  But  both  parents,  warned  by  their  secret  instincts, 
did  not  invite  their  son’s  friend  to  return,  and  lost  no  time 
1 G 


242  TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

in  telling  their  son  with  all  due  precaution  and  tenderness, 
— that  the  young  gentleman’ s  companionship  was  one  they 
did  not  wish  for  him,  and  that  his  intimacy  in  the  family 
was  most  undesirable.  Had  there  been  no  other  reason  for 
this  than  the  patronizing  airs  of  their  late  visitor,  the  hon¬ 
orable  self-respect  of  the  parents  would  not  submit  to  be 
looked  down  upon  by  anybody.  Besides,  the  young  man 
was  known  to  be  fast,  and  that  was  a  sufficient  motive  to 
cut  off  their  family  from  all  intercourse  with  him. 

Unfortunately  their  son  was  blind  to  all  these  reasons, 
and  deaf  to  their  entreaties,  and  he  had  already  begun  to 
turn  his  sister’s  head  about  the  conquest  she  had  made  of  his 
wealthy  and  much-admired  friend.  The  latter,  presuming 
on  this  friendship,  renewed  his  visits  as  well  as  his  attentions 
to  the  now  conscious  and  fascinated  girl ;  and  the  visits  be¬ 
came  so  frequent  and  the  attention  so  marked  that  the  fa¬ 
ther  felt  himself  bound  to  tell  his  visitor,  that  he  could 
not  permit  him  to  continue  his  intercourse  with  a  family  so 
much  inferior  to  his  own  in  social  position.  He  therefore  re¬ 
quested  him  to  abstain  from  anything  like  attention  to  his 
daughter,  since  an  alliance  between  the  families  was  not  to 
be  thought  of. 

The  other  was  not  to  be  put  off  in  this  way.  The  father 
had  spoken  plainly  to  him,  and  he  resented  his  interference 
as  an  insult  to  his  own  family  pride,  resolving  to  punish  the 
parent  in  the  child.  He  had  a  zealous  ally  in  the  girl’s 
brother,  and  through  him  kept  up  a  clandestine  correspon¬ 
dence  with  her.  The  girl’ s  infatuation  was  natural  enough, 
beset  as  she  was  by  secret  professions  of  love  on  the  part 
of  the  false  friend,  and  by  the  guilty  persuasions  of  her 
brother.  She  had  a  conscience,  however  ;  and  deemed  her¬ 
self  bound  to  tell  all  to  her  mother,  laying  before  her  the 
letters  she  had  received.  Thereupon  the  honest  mason 
sought  the  young  gentleman’s  father  and  laid  the  whole 
matter  before  him.  He  had  no  desire,  he  said,  that  any  of 
his  children  should  wed  outside  of  their  own  condition.  He 
was  anxious  to  secure  for  his  daughter,  the  virtuous  and 
industrious  son  of  a  man  like  himself,  who  had  been  the 


A  TERRIBLE  EXAMPLE. 


243 


architect  of  his  own  fortunes  and  belonged  to  his  own 
Church.  Any  other  would  only  create  division,  discomfort, 
and  unhappiness  in  his  family. 

Meanwhile,  the  two  young  men  had  gone  out  fishing  to¬ 
gether,  in  order  to  console  each  other  on  the  untoward  op¬ 
position  their  plans  met  with,  and  to  devise  some  means 
of  thwarting  it.  They  drank  freely  all  day,  and  were  re¬ 
turning  homeward  at  dusk,  when  some  ill-natured  allusion 
of  the  half -tipsy  lover  to  the  insolence  of  wealthy  shoe¬ 
blacks  and  hod-carriers,  stirred  up  his  companion’s  blood. 
Hot  words  were  bandied,  and  blows  were  exchanged,  and  in 
the  scuffle  the  boat  was  upset,  but  not  before  the  mason’s 
son  had  received  in  falling  a  blow  on  the  temple  which  ren¬ 
dered  him  insensible.  Neither  of  the  young  men  could 
swim  ;  the  senseless  man  sank  to  the  bottom  ;  while  the 
other  barely  saved  his  own  life  by  clinging  to  the  rudder  of 
the  upset  boat  till  fishermen  at  a  short  distance  came  to  the 
rescue.  But  the  unfortunate  companion,  in  the  interval, 
had  sunk  and  come  to  the  surface  repeatedly,  and  now  was 
to  be  found  no  more.  When,  after  much  exertion,  the  body 
was  recovered,  all  life  had  been  long  extinct. 

And  so,  into  that  family  which  had  never  known  sorrow 
or  sin,  late  at  night,  the  fishermen  carried  the  dead  unduti- 
ful  son,  destroyed  in  the  full  flower  of  his  youth,  because 
he  would  choose  his  own  companions,  and  be  wiser,  better 
than  the  parents  who  had  so  tenderly, — all  too  tenderly,  it 
may  be, — reared  him.  On  the  grief  of  the  mother, — the 
heart-rending  remorse  of  the  twin-sister,  we  mercifully 
drop  the  veil. 

“  Oil,  who  that  knows  where  faults  may  first  begin. 

Shall  bid  not  earth  be  just,  before  ’tis  hard,  with  sin  ?” 

On  this  matter,  as  well  as  on  many  others,  which  regard 
domestic  education,  we  must  refer  our  readers  to  4  4  The 
Mirrow  of  True  Womanhood,”  and  the  Mother’s  office  in 
the  household.* 


*  See,  in  particular,  chapters  xii.,  xiii.,  xiv.,  xv. 


244 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Training  of  the  Mind. 

With  respect  to  intellectual  education,  it  must  be  further 
added,  that  the  father  cannot  be  too  watchful  and  firm  in 
preventing  his  sons  from  acquiring  loose  habits  of  learning, 
thinking,  and  studying.  It  is  most  essential  to  the  welfare 
of  every  boy  that  he  be  forced  to  be  orderly  and  methodi¬ 
cal  in  acquiring  knowledge,  as  well  as  in  using  it.  Do  not 
give  a  child  too  much  to  do,  but  make  him  do  well  what¬ 
ever  you  give  him.  This  thoroughness  and  accuracy  may 
be  a  little  irksome  to  him  in  the  beginning  ;  but  if  you  are 
firm  and  persistent,  the  boy  will  soon  see  the  benefit  of 
working  in  this  way.  A  mind  must  be  very  ill  constituted, 
that  does  not  take  a  great  natural  delight  in  acquiring 
knowledge,  and  in  making  a  sensible  progress  in  it.  We 
are  so  framed  by  our  all-wise  Creator,  that  the  soul  rejoices 
as  much  at  mastering  a  problem  of  algebra  or  geometry, 
at  learning  to  draw  a  classic  head  or  a  beautiful  tree  in  a 
landscape,  as  in  being  the  first  at  base-ball  or  cricket.  We 
feel  a  joy  and  a  pride  in  cultivating  and  displaying  our 
powers, — a  deeper  joy  and  loftier  pride  at  excelling  in 
exercises  of  the  mind  than  in  those  of  the  body. 

You  must  act  upon  this  natural  love  of  progress  and  ex¬ 
cellence,  and  accustom  your  boys,  in  whatever  they  do,  to 
do  it  accurately,  heartily,  and  well.  For  well  they  can 
scarcely  do  it  unless  they  do  it  with  a  will.  One  indispen¬ 
sable  condition  toward  doing  everything  well  is,  not  only 
to  put  their  heart  in  it,  but  to  put  their  whole  mind  to  it. 
Attention  to  one  thing  at  a  time,  undivided  attention  to 
what  one  is  doing  here  and  now, — are  golden  rules  for  suc¬ 
cess.  Inattention  weakens  the  mind  and  prevents  it  from 
grasping  the  subject  or  taking  in  the  knowledge  of  what 
is  just  before  it.  It  is  like  the  attempt  one  would  make  to 
grasp  with  the  hand,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  three  differ¬ 
ent  balls,  each  of  which  is  quite  large  enough  to  fill  it. 
“ One  thing  at  a  time,”  must  be  the  rule.  We  have  known 
men,  gifted  with  more  than  fair  abilities,  who  have  sue- 


GOLDEN  RULES. 


245 


ceeded  only  in  becoming  “  confused  ”  in  every  subject  they 
would  fain  study,  comprehend,  or  discuss.  Because  their 
mind  never  had  been  trained  to  these  habits  of  accuracy 
and  close  attention.  Place  before  their  mind’ s  eye  the  sim¬ 
plest  proposition,  and,  instead  of  looking  at  it  simply  as  it 
is,  they  will  puzzle  themselves  by  seeing,  alongside  of  it, 
another  proposition  which  is  both  like  and  unlike  the  first, — 
so  that  they  do  not  know  which  is  which.  These  men  be¬ 
come  the  most  troublesome  of  logicians,  because  they  never 
seize  accurately  what  you  say  to  them,  nor  see  clearly  what\ 
they  mean  themselves. 

Grammar-School  Education. 

Happy  the  children  blessed  with  a  home  in  which  they 
can  receive  a  complete  education,  moral  and  intellectual, 
fitting  them  for  all  the  duties  of  after-life  !  We  fear  that 
such  homes  are  very  rare  among  us, — rare,  at  least,  as  com¬ 
pared  with  the  immense  majority  of  families  less  privileged 
in  culture  or  in  means.  In  Ireland  and  England  during  the 
dark  centuries  of  persecution,  home-education  was  the  ex¬ 
clusive  mode  of  training  the  children  alike  of  rich  and  poor 
Catholics.  The  very  necessity  of  rearing  them  in  the  knowl¬ 
edge  and  practice  of  their  ancestral  faith,  as  well  as  in  all 
such  branches  of  learning  as  became  their  station,  made  the 
parents  themselves  uncommonly  careful  in  acquiring  the 
necessary  accomplishments  and  the  methods  by  which  these 
should  be  taught  to  others.  Thus  were  brought  up  many  a 
generation  of  devoted  men  and  women, — true  to  all  that  we 
hold  as  most  sacred  and  praiseworthy.  College  education 
was  only  to  be  had  abroad,  or, — in  the  case  of  children  of 
the  lower  classes, — to  be  got  in  scraps  from  itinerant  mas¬ 
ters,  who  taught  at  the  risk  of  their  own  lives,  while  the 
peril  of  their  pupils  and  of  the  pupils’  parents  was  little 
less. 

These  days  have  passed  in  the  Sister  Islands, — and  the 
dark  cloud  which  there  so  long  oppressed  Catholic  homes, 
now  rests  on  more  than  one  continental  country  ; — how 


246 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


long, — is  the  secret  of  God’s  providence.  But  no  man  who 
has  read  in  local  history  of  the  trials  and  heroism  of  our 
Catholic  ancestors,  and  who  is  acquainted  with  the  robust 
faith,  the  solid  and  varied  learning,  as  well  as  the  unshaken 
attachment  to  principle  of  the  men  and  women  who  have 
gone  forth  from  these  homes, — can  feel  surprise  at  the  zeal 
of  their  descendants  for  the  religious  training  of  the  young. 

It  is  far  from  our  purpose, — even  could  we  do  so  here 
with  advantage  or  propriety, — to  enter  into  a  discussion  of 
principles  concerning  religious  teaching  in  the  schools  main¬ 
tained  at  the  public  expense  and  placed  under  the  control 
of  the  State. 

We  simply  affirm  the  sacred  and  indefeasible  right  of  the 
parent  to  see  to  it  that  his  child,  by  wdiom soever  or  where¬ 
soever  educated,  be  not  only  safe  from  all  teaching  and 
influence  calculated  to  weaken  his  faith  or  stain  his  purity, 
but  also  trained  in  the  knowledge  and  practice  of  the  true 
religion.  It  is  the  parent’s  imperative  and  indispensable 
duty  to  take  care  that  his  children  are  so  brought  up  at 
home  :  the  masters  to  whom  he  trusts  his  boys  outside  of 
his  home,  either  for  elementary  instruction  or  for  college 
or  university  education,  only  represent  him,  and  possess 
over  his  children  that  portion  of  the  parental  authority  that 
he  devolves  on  them. 

If  the  college  or  the  school  cannot  or  will  not  give  his 
boys  such  religious  and  moral  training  as  is  the  parent’s 
right  and  duty  to  obtain  for  them,  then  his  conscience  will 
induce  him  to  seek  elsewhere  such  educators  as  may  fulfill 
the  obligation  of  forming  the  mind  and  heart  of  youth  in 
accordance  with  the  dictates  of  the  divine  law. 

The  Foremost  Duty  of  a  Parent. 

The  religious  and  moral  training  of  the  children,  is  fore¬ 
most  among  parental  duties.  No  matter  in  whose  hands 
the  boy  is  placed,  and  how  safe  soever  the  guidance  of  his 
teachers  may  be,  the  father  must  see  to  it  that  the  teacher 
does  his  duty  thoroughly. 


CHRISTIAN  SCHOOLS  FOR  CHRISTIAN  FAMILIES.  247 

It  cannot,  from  tliis  point  of  view  of  simple  and  unavoid¬ 
able  duty,  be  a  matter  of  surprise  that  Catholic  parents 
everywhere  show  themselves  so  jealous  of  the  purity  of  the 
religious  doctrines  taught  their  children,  and  of  the  irre¬ 
proachable  morality  of  both  masters  and  companions.  Nor, 
where  the  atmosphere  and  teaching  of  a  school  is  judged  per¬ 
nicious  by  the  parents  themselves  or  their  trusted  religious 
guides, — can  it  be  a  matter  of  reproach  to  such  parents,  if 
they  use  every  endeavor  and  make  every  sacrifice  to  secure 
schools  and  teachers,  safe  in  point  of  doctrine  and  morality, 
and  equal  or  superior  in  point  of  ability  to  the  more  privi¬ 
leged  or  patronized. 

Th  is  Conscientious  Spirit  not  Aggress  ire. 

Between  the  imperative  sense  of  conscientions  duty  im¬ 
pelling  both  parents  and  their  religious  teachers  to  secure 
truly  Christian  schools,  and  the  aggressive  spirit  that  de¬ 
nounces  what  is  wrong  and  defective  without  ever  building 
up  anything,— there  is  assuredly  a  wide  difference. 

We  are  for  allowing  other  religious  denominations  to  se¬ 
cure  and  maintain  for  their  children  educational  institutions 
in  every  way  suited  to  their  views  of  parental  duty.  But 
the  right  we  should  vindicate  for  others,  we  must  unhesi¬ 
tatingly  and  unflinchingly  assert  and  pursue  in  our  own 
behalf. 

Yes, — a  thoroughly  Christian,  thoroughly  Catholic  system 
of  education  for  our  boys, — is  the  first  and  most  pressing- 
need  of  our  age  and  country.  The  Church  has  again  and 
again  declared  it  so ;  and,  even  in  the  absence  of  any  such 
recent  and  solemn  declaration,  the  voice  of  authority  in  the 
past  has  spoken  loudly  and  repeatedly,  while  the  clearly  ex¬ 
pressed  voice  of  God  in  His  revealed  word,  leaves  no  doubt 
as  to  the  duty  of  parents  and  the  obligation  of  pastors. 

Most  blessed  of  God,  therefore,  and  approved  of  all  true 
men  is  the  generosity  manifested  by  all  rich  and  poor  in 
this  needful  work  of  creating  and  supporting  Christian 
schools.  And,  above  all,  most  blessed  will  be  the  day  when 


248 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


our  Hierarchy  can  spare,  from  the  many  pressing  wants 
of  their  struggling  institutions,  the  means  necessary  for 
creating  Normal  Schools, — the  nurseries  of  accomplished 
teachers  of  both  sexes  ! 

With  these  remarks  on  the  greatest  need  of  the  century, 
we  pass  to  the  superintendence  which  the  father  ought  to 
exercise  on  his  boys  daily  after  their  return  from  school. 

This  superintendence  is  but  a  part  of  the  parent’s  neces¬ 
sary  cooperation  in  the  work  which  the  teacher  is  doing 
during  school  hours.  Are  we  doing  parents  injustice  when 
we  say,  that  very  many,  if  not  most  of  them,  seem  not  to  be 
aware  of  the  great  importance  of  their  helping  forward  by 
every  means  in  their  own  power,  the  efforts  of  masters,  pro¬ 
fessors,  and  all  others  engaged  in  educating  them  children  ? 

Educat  ion  the  joint  Worlc  of  both  Parents  and  Teachers. 

This  is  a  matter  not  to  be  passed  over  lightly.  For,  after 
many  years  spent  in  Canada  and  the  United  States,  in  the 
labors  of  a  professorship,  and  after  a  serious  study  of  col¬ 
lege  and  university  life  abroad,  the  author  is  bound  to  say, — * 
that  one  of  the  chief  reasons, — if  not,  indeed,  the  chief  rea¬ 
son  of  the  ill  success  of  college  education  in  the  case  of  so 
many  boys,  lies  at  the  door  of  the  parents. 

The  parents  at  home  and  the  masters  and  directors  in 
school  or  college,  are  bound  to  work  together  in  educating 
the  boy.  The  work  for  which  they  join  hands,  is  always 
and  necessarily  the  work  of  the  parents.  If,  at  school  or 
in  college,  those  who  undertake  to  educate  youth  fail  in 
doing  their  full  duty,  they  sin,  in  doing  so,  against  God, 
against  the  parents,  and  against  the  child,  especially.  But, 
meanwhile,  the  parents  are  not  relieved  from  their  obliga¬ 
tion  of  watching  with  a  scrupulous  care  over  the  progress 
of  their  boys  both  in  learning  and  in  virtue.  When  the 
school  or  the  college  fails  to  do  its  work,  or  does  it  wrongly, 
— then  it  becomes  incumbent  on  the  father  to  have  the 
wrong  repaired,  and  to  use  a  twofold  diligence  in  making 
up  for  lost  time. 


INSTANCES  OF  THIS  CO-OPERATION 


249 


The  great  bulk  of  fathers  and  mothers, — even  of  the  bet¬ 
ter  educated, — think,  or  act  as  if  they  thought, — that  they 
have  done  their  full  duty,  when  they  have  sent  their  chil¬ 
dren  to  the  Sunday  school  for  religious  instruction,  and  to 
school  or  college  for  secular  instruction,  or  the  completion 
of  their  entire  course  of  education. 

This  is  a  great  mistake.  You  must  moreover  make  sure 
that  your  boy  reaches  the  Sunday  school  in  good  time,  that 
he  is  there  properly  and  thoroughly  taught ; — and  it  will 
be  both  your  interest  and  your  duty,  if  you  attend  yourself 
occasionally  in  the  catechism  class,  and,  after  catechism 
hours,  question  closely  the  boy  about  what  he  has  learned. 
But,  will  not  this  be  too  great  a  hardship  for  the  child  as 
well  as  for  the  parent  \  So  far  as  the  child  is  concerned, 
there  will  be  no  hardship,  provided  that  you  study  to  make 
him  love  to  learn  his  catechism,  as  you  should  make  him  do 
all  else,  — by  a  generous  sense  of  duty. 

We  remember  well,  while  yet  a  very  young  priest  in  the 
dear  old  city  of  Quebec,  that  hard-working  men  would  walk 
for  miles  to  Sunday  school  with  their  boys,  making  the  road 
pleasant  for  these  *  by  lively  and  entertaining  conversation, 
and,  when  catechism  and  prayers  were  ended,  returning  to 
their  homes  with  redoubled  joy  to  share  with  their  children 
all  the  sweet  and  innocent  recreation  of  the  Sunday  evening. 
Indeed,  the  Sunday-school  seemed  to  be  the  great  work  of 
the  Lord’s  day  for  all  the  most  distinguished  men  of  the 
place.  The  then  Provincial  Secretary,  the  Bight  Honorable 
Sir  Dominick  Daly,  was  at  the  head  of  the  Christian  Doc¬ 
trine  Society,  and  taught  his  own  catechism  class,  and  so 
did  every  one  of  our  foremost  merchants  and  young  men, — 
the  non-commissioned  officers  of  the  garrison  also  deeming 
it  an  honor  to  take  a  hand  in  this  divine  work. 

And  thus  we  were  reminded  of  our  own  native  home, 
where  the  gentlest  and  the  best  devoted  several  hours  of 
the  blessed  Sabbath  repose  to  the  religious  instruction  of 
the  young. 

Ho,  no !  Do  not  say  it  is  a  hardship  either  for  fathers  or 
for  their  sons  to  gather,  on  the  Lord’s  day,  this  sweet 


250 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


manna  of  divine  truth  ; — doubly  and  tenfold  sweet  the  God 
of  the  Sabbath  knows  how  to  make  it  to  men  of  good  will. 

We  say  nothing  of  the  means  employed  by  zealous  and 
enlightened  priests  to  render  the  exercises  of  the  Sunday 
school  interesting,  attractive,  and  delightful, — such  as  cho¬ 
ral  singing,  recitations,  and  appropriate  rewards  from  time 
to  time. 

In  like  manner  you  will  see  to  it  that  your  boys  do  their 
duty  at  school,  and  that  they  study  after  school  hours  the 
matters  given  them  by  their  teachers.  Omit  no  effort  to 
excite  and  sustain  your  boys’  emulation  ;  if  their  masters 
are  really  zealous  to  push  them  forward,  do  you  second 
this  zeal  by  every  means  in  your  power.  See  their  teachers 
often  ;  show  them  that  you  are  most  anxious  to  cooperate 
with  them.  Without  being  either  obtrusive  or  unduly  in¬ 
quisitive,  you  can  easily  ascertain  what  methods  are  used 
in  the  school,  and  what  pains  taken  by  the  masters  in  fur¬ 
thering  the  progress  of  their  pupils. 

Respect ,  Love,  and  Sustain  your  Children' s  Teachers. 

But,  above  all  things,  beware  of  the  too  common  and 
most  hurtful  custom  of  certain  parents  (and  uneducated 
parents  are  not  the  sole  offenders  in  this  respect), — of  con¬ 
sidering  their  children’s  teachers,  and  treating  them,  as  if 
they  were  natural  enemies  to  be  watched,  abused,  and 
thwarted  at  every  turn.  There  are  parents,  who  take  the 
part  of  their  unruly  and  untruthful  children  against  their 
teachers,  who  look  upon  every  punishment  inflicted  on  the 
latter  as  an  injustice  which  calls  for  immediate  redress. 
There  are  others  again  who  keep  their  children  away  from 
school  on  the  slightest  pretext,  or  who  are  utterly  careless 
of  sending  them  punctually  at  the  appointed  hours ;  and 
having  thus  broken  in  upon  their  boys’  studies  and  seri¬ 
ously  hindered  their  progress, — they  will  blame  and  abuse 
the  masters  for  the  backwardness,  the  insubordination,  and 
all  the  irregular  and  idle  habits  of  which  they, — the  parents, 
— are  themselves  the  sole  cause  ! 


THE  KIND  OF  SCHOOLS  CHILDREN  NEED. 


251 


Never, — unless  you  have  carefully  and  calmly  ascertained 
the  fact, — never  sustain  your  boys  against  the  teacher’s 
authority  ;  and,  especially,  never,  when  your  boys  com¬ 
plain  of  the  latter,  allow  yourself  to  utter  one  word  of  cen¬ 
sure  or  blame.  Always  lean  to  the  side  of  authority. 
You  have  given  the  teacher  yours  in  the  school ;  make  your 
boys  respect  it  invariably. 

Take  a  lively  and  continual  interest  in  your  boys’  studies. 
Let  them  feel  that  you  are  more  pleased  with  their  daily 
progress,'  than  if  they  brought  you  home  gold  or  some  pre¬ 
cious  object  at  the  end  of  each  day’s  schooling. 

If  you  are  forced  to  choose  another  school  for  your  chil¬ 
dren, — or,  when  you  have  not  made  your  first  choice, — we 
should  advise  you  to  peruse  slowly  the  following  beautiful 
lines,  full  of  that  love  of  innocence  and  child-life,  which 
was  so  dear  to  the  Master. 

I  sauntered  where  the  town  and  country  meet. 

Where  Art  and  Nature  battle  for  the  street. 

Where,  ere  the  stones  had  vanished  from  my  foot. 

The  grass  laughed  up  at  me  a  gay  salute. 

In  leafy  contiguity  I  heard 

The  mellow  note  of  some  love-brooding  bird  ; 

And  nearer  still  I  heard  a  droning  noise. 

Come  from  a  hive  of  bees  or  school  of  boys, 

But  which  I  could  not  tell,  until  my  eye 
Lighted  upon  a  porch,  as  butterfly 
Lights  on  a  kingdom  of  all-mingled  bloom, 

‘  Wherein  the  flowers  breathe  out  their  beauteous  doom 
And  fill  the  air  with  souls.  To  that  flower-cell 
I  leaned  my  ear,  as  to  a  humming  shell. 

And  heard  the  moan  as  of  a  fairy  sea 
Far  in  the  dim  domain  of  mystery. 

Then  growing  bolder,  I  advanced  a  pace 
Into  the  trellised  porch,  and  saw  the  place  : 

And,  lo  !  as  I  do  live,  a  little  school, 

Wherein  an  easy  dame  kept  easy  rule, 

And  learned,  as  well  as  taught,  the  way  to  know. 

About  her  sat,  but  in  no  formal  row, 

Her  little  students,  serious,  but  unfrightened. 

Surely,  T  thought,  this  is  a  school  enlightened. 

Where  neither  word  of  wrath,  nor  lash  descends 
To  harden  knowledge  unto  hateful  ends  : 


252 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


Where  rule  is  quietly  taught  and  quickly  learned, — 

Things  apprehended,  if  not  quite  discerned  ; 

And  where  bright  youth  is  lifted  to  a  height 

From  which  he  sees  each  glorious  height  on  height, — 

Those  starry  souls  by  whose  effulgent  breath 
The  world  is  snatched  from  chaos,  man  from  death. 

A  pleasant  school — a  pleasant  sight  for  eye 
That  loveth  spots  where  nothing  seems  to  die  ; 

Where  winds  are  soft,  flowers  sweetly  bloom,  and  man 
Fits  like  a  star  into  dear  Nature’s  plan, 

And  wins  by  truth  and  unreposing  duty 

The  throne  of  wisdom  and  the  crown  of  beauty.”  * 

Yes, — that  is  what  parents  and  teachers,  the  most  ad¬ 
vanced  in  years  and  in  learning,  the  reverend  guides  and 
eminent  governors  of  peoples,  can  do  every  day  they  live, 
in  spite  of  the  longest  and  widest  experience, 

“  To  learn,  as  well  as  teach,  the  way  to  know.” 

The  oldest  of  ns,  the  most  learned,  the  wisest, — as  they 
look  back  over  their  dealings  with  the  young,  would  wish 
to  undo  much  that  they  did,  to  unlearn  much  of  what  they 
thought  they  knew,  and  to  begin  again  with  childhood,  and 
“learn  the  way  to  know,” — the  way  to  know  child-nature, 
in  particular,  the  sweet  and  love-lit  way  to  children’s  souls. 

Above  all,  O  fathers,  be  sure, — whether  your  dear  ones 
are  “schooled”  inside  your  home  or  outside  of  it,— that 
their  souls  are  not  narrowed  down  and  straightened  by 
the  methods  followed  in  teaching  them,  and  that  their 
hearts  retain  all  the  freshness,  the  candor,  the  simplicity  of 
childhood.  Keep  them  children  as  long  as  ever  you  can  ! 


*  Robert  Buchanan,  “Wayside  Poesies.” 


CHAPTER  XIII. 


PATERNAL  AUTHORITY  AND  PUBLIC  EDUCATION. 


These  Teachers  were  known  to  maintain  that  double  commerce  which  Mura- 
tori  styles  sweet  and  useful — with  the  wise  living  and  the  wise  dead.*  The 
guides  of  the  Catholic  School,  as  the  learned  men  of  the  Church  from  primitive 
times,  are  still  what  they  once  were — clear  but  mystical — devoted  to  serve  men 
with  an  intense  affection,  but  separate  from  the  crowd.  Remote  from  all  ego¬ 
tism,  it  is  clear  to  their  disciples  that  they  only  obey  a  high  influence,  and  that 
their  awful  task  is  imposed.  This  character  of  retirement  and  solemnity  adds 
a  great  interest  to  their  lessons,  as  to  their  books.  Youth  will  not  turn  from 
them  to  hear  a  teacher,  who,  like  the  generality  of  writers  now,  is  one  of  the 
public — a  man  of  noise,  a  man  of  news,  a  man  of  money. — Kenelm  Henry 
Digby. 

Ah  unerring  instinct  in  the  heart  of  a  Catholic  parent  will 
direct  him,  in  seeking  for  his  boy  the  guides  who  can  lead 
the  latter  safely  through  the  walks  of  classic  antiquity, 
and  the  bewildering  mazes  of  modern  science — like  the  ill- 
arranged  departments  of  some  Centennial  Exhibition — to 
select  the  men  who  have  sought  eminence  in  learning 
through  a  holy  ambition,  and  who  impart  it  for  His  love 
who  “is  a  God  of  all  knowledge.”  It  is  a  great  attraction 
too  for  men  who  have  had  themselves,  very  often,  to  fight 
a  hard  battle  with  fortune,  and  whose  ancestors  had  to  en¬ 
dure  all  but  the  loss  of  life  in  fostering  Catholic  educa¬ 
tion, — to  be  able  to  give  their  sons,  their  money,  and  their 

*  Dulce  est  eruditionis  sectatoribus  quotodie  com  mortuis  versari  ;  dulcius  pro- 
fecto  futurum,  cum  vivis,  a  quibus  brevi  facilique  compendio  eruditior  in  dies 
discedas. 

“  It  is  sweet  to  the  votaries  of  knowledge  to  hold  daily  converse  with  the 
dead  ;  but  far  sweeter  will  it  be  to  converse  with  the  living,  from  whose  inter¬ 
course,  by  a  short  and  easy  method,  one  may  daily  become  more  learned.” 

.  253 


254 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM \ 


heartfelt  sympathy  to  institutions  of  higher  learning  strug¬ 
gling  against  the  most  adverse  circumstances. 

If  parents  could  only  understand,  that,  much  as  the  par¬ 
ish  school  deserves  of  their  unflinching  support,  the  College 
and  the  University  are  even  more  deserving  of  their  enthu¬ 
siastic  advocacy  and  utmost  generosity.  For  the  parish 
school  is  destined  to  serve  as  a  feeder  to  the  college,  just  as 
colleges  are,  in  the  mind  of  the  Church,  to  serve  as  fruitful 
nurseries  to  the  University.  And  if  the  body  of  our  people 
only  knew, — what  the  author  can  speak  of  from  the  most 
certain  knowledge, — how  little  the  noble  men  who  devote 
their  entire  existence  to  the  arduous  functions  of  classical 
instruction,  receive  of  active,  cheering  sympathy  and  sadly 
needed  support  from  the  community  they  serve  so  well ! 
~No — there  is  no  class  of  toilers  for  the  public  welfare,  who 
should  be  more  cordially  helped  on  in  the  divine  life-work 
they  are  doing,  than  those  who  rear  our  priests,  our  states¬ 
men,  our  enlightened  merchants  and  professional  men. 

The  Divine  Work  done  by  our  Colleges. 

The  sole  aim  and  sole  care  of  these  devoted  guides  of 
youth, — the  very  flower  of  our  aristocracy  of  learning  and 
piety, — is  to  prepare  for  the  Church  and  the  country  public 
men  whose  example  shall  be  a  living  lesson  to  all  beneath 
and  around  them,  and  whose  salutary  influence  shall  coun¬ 
terbalance  that  of  the  unprincipled,  the  irreligious,  the 
selflsli,  and  the  sensual.  Farther  on  in  this  book,  we  shall 
speak  of  schools  of  science, — whether  theoretical  or  applied. 
We  only  wish  at  present  to  direct  the  parent  in  the  choice 
of  a  proper  establishment  of  higher  education,  and  to  offer 
to  the  educators  themselves  some  practical  suggestions  that 
may  aid  them  not  a  little  in  their  labors. 

That  in  our  establishments  of  higher  Education  we  should 
have  men  whose  sole  interest  and  sole  avocation  lie  in  their 
doing  thoroughly  the  work  of  rearing  youth  to  the  practice 
of  true  piety  as  well  as  to  solid  learning,  must  be  a  subject 
of  congratulation  to  Christian  parents.  There  is  so  much 


A  BEAUTIFUL  IDEAL. 


255 


heart-satisfaction  for  a  father  and  a  mother  in  the  thought 
that  the  men  and  women  to  whom  they  intrust  their  dear 
ones,  will  make  of  their  advancement  in  virtue  a  matter  of 
even  greater  importance  than  their  progress  in  knowledge  ! 

The  Catholic  Ideal  of  Religious  Teachers  of  Youth. 

The  ideal  followed  by  such  teachers  of  youth  all  through 
the  middle  ages  is  thus  described  by  Digby  : 

“The  care  of  religious  men  to  educate  the  young  was  not 
confined  to  supplying  them  with  oral  or  written  instruction. 

It  was  for  them  especially  that  religion  loved,  under  the 
form  of  the  fine  arts,  to  impress  on  the  material  elements 
around,  the  stamp  of  ideal  humanity,  that,  as  Fichte  says, 
‘at  their  very  awakening  into  life,  they  might  be  environed 
by  noble  objects,  such  as  by  a  certain  sympathetic  power, 
would  educate  the  outward  senses,  whereby  the  education 
of  the  inner  man  might  be  greatly  facilitated.’  It  was  the 
object  of  education  not  so  much  to  impart  a  variety  of  * 
knowledge,  as  to  cultivate  that  mind  which  would  be  able 
either  to  reap  the  benefit  of  knowledge  subsequently  ob¬ 
tained,  where  an  extraordinary  degree  of  knowledge  was 
required,  or  to  discharge  the  ordinary  duties  of  life  with 
honesty  and  perseverance  to  the  end,  where  there  was  no 
occasion  for  acquiring  such  a  distinction. 

“Agreeable  to  this  plan,  the  young  were  to  be  thoroughly 
imbued  with  a  delicate  and  profound  sense  of  everything 
noble  and  gracious,  which  would  be  alike  useful  to  all ; 
that,  to  borrow  a  simile  from  Plato,  as  the  young  who  in¬ 
habit  a  healthy  spot  are  benefited  by  everything  around 
them,  so  whatever  was  thrown  before  them  from  beautiful 
deeds,  whether  in  the  way  of  seeing  or  of  hearing,  like  an 
air  from  pure  places  bearing  health,  might  lead  them  to  a 
resemblance,  and  friendship,  and  harmony,  with  what  is 
good  and  fair.”* 

To  his  ideal  of  education  in  ages  that  must  ever  be  dear 
to  the  Christian  soul,  let  us  only  bring  the  living,  practical 


*  “  Mores  Catliolici ;  or,  Ages  of  Faith,”  b.  i.,  chap.  vii. 


256 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

4 


spirit,  the  thorough  intelligence  of  the  needs  of  modern 
society,  and  the  hearty  earnestness,  which  endeared  to  all 
who  knew  him  the  great  educator  of  our  own  times  men¬ 
tioned  in  the  following  passage.  W e  submit  it  to  the  con¬ 
sideration  of  all  our  great  teaching  bodies. 

Earnest  Workers  doing  Noble  Work. 

‘ 4  The  most  remarkable  thing  which  struck  me  at  once  on 
joining  the  Laleham  circle,  was  the  wonderful  healthiness 
of  tone  and  feeling  which  prevailed  in  it.  Everything  about 
me  I  immediately  found  to  be  most  real ;  it  was  a  place 
where  a  new-comer  at  once  felt  that  a  great  and  earnest 
work  was  going  forward.  Dr.  Arnold’ s  *  great  power  as  a 
private  tutor  resided  in  this,  that  he  gave  such  an  intense 
earnestness  to  life.  Every  pupil  was  made  to  feel  that 
there  was  a  work  for  him  to  do — that  his  happiness  as  well 
as  his  duty  lay  in  doing  that  work  well.  Hence  an  inde¬ 
scribable  zest  was  communicated  to  a  young  man’s  feelings 
about  life  ;  a  strange  joy  came  over  him  on  discovering  that 
he  had  the  means  of  being  useful,  and  thus  of  being  happy ; 
and  a  deep  respect  and  ardent  attachment  sprang  up  to¬ 
wards  him  who  had  taught  him  thus  to  value  life  and  his 
own  self,  and  his  work  and  mission  in  this  world. 

“  All  this  was  founded  on  the  breadth  and  comprehensive¬ 
ness  of  Arnold’s  character,  as  well  as  its  striking  truth  and 
reality  ;  on  the  unfeigned  regard  he  had  for  work  of  all 
kinds,  and  the  sense  he  had  of  its  value  both  for  the  com¬ 
plex  aggregate  of  society  and  the  growth  and  perfection  of 
the  individual. 

“Thus  pupils  of  the  most  different  natures  were  keenly 
stimulated  ;  none  felt  that  he  was  left  out,  or  that,  because 
he  was  not  endowed  with  large  powers  of  mind,  there  was 
no  sphere  open  to  him  in  the  honorable  pursuits  of  useful¬ 
ness.  This  wonderful  power  of  making  all  the  pupils  re- 

*  Thomas  Arnold,  D.D.,  born  in  1795,  died  in  1842.  He  was,  successively,  head 
master  of  the  Classical  Schools  of  Laleham  and  Rugby, — preeminently  success¬ 
ful  in  each. 


ARNOLD'S  WONDERFUL  LNFLUENCE. 


257 


spect  themselves,  and  in  awakening  in  them  a  conscious¬ 
ness  of  the  duties  that  God  has  assigned  to  them  person¬ 
ally,  and  of  the  consequent  reward  each  should  have  for  his 
labors,  was  one  of  Arnold’s  most  characteristic  features  as 
a  trainer  of  youth.  He  possessed  it  eminently  at  Rugby ; 
but,  if  I  may  trust  my  own  vivid  recollection,  he  had  it 
quite  as  remarkably  at  Laleham. 

“  His  hold  over  all  his  pupils  I  know  perfectly  astonished 
me.  It  was  not  so  much  an  enthusiastic  admiration  for 
his  genius,  or  learning,  or  eloquence,  which  stirred  within 
them ;  it  was  a  sympathetic  thrill ,  caught  from  a  spirit 
that  was  earnestly  at  work  in  the  world — whose  work  teas 
healthy ,  sustained ,  and  constantly  carried  forward  in  the 
fear  of  God — a  work  which  was  founded  on  a  deep  sense 
of  its  duty  and  its  value  ;  and  was  coupled  with  such  a  true 
humility,  such  an  unaffected  simplicity,  that  others  could 
not  help  being  invigorated  by  the  same  feeling,  and  with 
the  belief  that  they  too  in  their  measure  could  go  and  do 
likewise. 

“In  all  this  there  was  no  excitement,  no  predilection  for 
one  class  of  work  above  another ;  no  enthusiasm  for  any 
one-sided  object;  but  a  humble,  profound,  and  most  reli¬ 
gious  consciousness  that  work  is  the  appointed  calling  of 
man  on  earth,  the  end  for  which  his  various  faculties  were 
given,  the  element  in  which  his  nature  is  ordained  to  de¬ 
velop  itself,  and  in  which  his  progressive  advance  toward 
heaven  is  to  lie.  Hence,  each  pupil  felt  assured  of  Arnold’s 
sympathy  in  his  own  particular  growth  and  character  of 
talent ;  in  striving  to  cultivate  his  own  gifts ,  in  whatever 
direction  they  might  lead  him ,  he  infallibly  found  Arnold 
not  only  approving ,  but  positively  and  sincerely  valuing 
for  themselves  the  results  he  had  arrived  at ;  and  that  ap¬ 
probation  and  esteem  gave  a  dignity  and  a  worth  both  to 
Jdmself  and  to  his  labor 

*  Quoted  from  Kniglit,  “  Half  Hours  with  the  Best  Authors/’  The  italics  are 
our  own. 


17 


258 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


The  Presiding  Spirit  malces  the  School. 

There  is  no  doubt  of  it — the  entire  and  most  perfect  suc¬ 
cess  of  the  work  of  education,  carried  on  at  any  one  mo¬ 
ment  by  a  great  school  or  public  establishment,  depends  on 
the  master  spirit  who  presides  over  it,  and  who  knows  how 
to  infuse  his  own  earnestness  into  his  subordinates,  to  com¬ 
municate  to  every  one  of  his  pupils  something  of  the  sacred 
lire  which  burns  within  his  own  bosom.  Where  every  pupil 
is  “  made  to  feel  that  there  is  work  for  him  to  do, — that  his 
happiness  as  well  as  his  duty  lies  in  doing  that  work  well,” 
there  will  of  a  necessity  be  earnestness,  not  to  say  enthu¬ 
siasm,  in  the  daily  and  hourly  efforts  of  each  student. 

There  is  a  way  of  making  boys  at  college  know  and  feel, 
that  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin  is  only  an  introduction 
to  the  whole  of  that  ancient  world  and  its  civilization,  with 
which  the  world  and  civilization  of  to-day  are  so  intimately 
connected.  We  know, — and  many  among  our  readers,  we 
doubt  not,  have  known,  very  young  people,  girls  even  of 
tender  age,  who  make  it  a  delight  to  master  the  languages 
of  Greek  and  Rome,  that  they  may  thus  be  enabled  to  read 
and  appreciate  the  masterpieces  of  their  great  writers. 

Let  the  men  to  whose  lot  it  falls  to  teach  boys  the  first 
elements  of  the  rich  and  beautiful  tongues  of  Yirgil  and 
Horace  and  Cicero, — of  Xenophon,  Plato,  Demosthenes,  and 
Homer, — be  the  men  they  ought  to  be,  full  of  the  Christian 
spirit, — thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  languages  they  un¬ 
dertake  to  teach,  thoroughly  in  love  with  their  work,  and 
deeply  interested  in  the  advancement  of  each  of  their  pu¬ 
pils  ;  knowing  how  to  throw  around  their  lessons  and  ex¬ 
planations  a  little  of  that  light  of  fancy  which  is  so  lovely 
and  attractive  to  young  minds ; — and  they  will  find  little 
difficulty  in  communicating  to  these  a  love  for  their  studies. 

It  is  because  the  men  who  are  charged  with  the  task  of 
teaching  Greek  and  Latin,  are  themselves  but  most  imper¬ 
fectly  acquainted  with  the  simplest  elements  of  these  lan¬ 
guages  (and  we  have  known  many  such),  that  the  labor  of 


THE  TEACHER'S  SOUL,  THE  SOUL  OF  TEACHING.  259 


learning,  for  boys  full  of  life  and  naturally  impatient  of 
dullness,  becomes  one  of  intolerable  hardship. 

A  Bad  Teacher  is  a  cruel  injustice  to  liis  Scholars. 

We  remember,  in  an  institution  for  the  highest  and  most 
important  of  all  human  sciences, — to  have  seen  a  man  in¬ 
trusted  with  the  duty  of  teaching  a  class  of  Hebrew  to 
young  men  who  had  been  themselves,  every  one  of  them, 
for  years  occupied  in  teaching  the  higher  classes, — and  this 
Hebrew  scholar  had  to  spell  most  painfully  every  word  and 
syllable  of  the  text  (the  Book  of  Psalms)  he  had  under¬ 
taken  to  explain.  Of  course  he  blundered  even  in  the 
spelling,  confounding  long,  vowels  with  short,  and  mixing 
up  in  inextricable  confusion  the  various  consonants.  Of 
prosody,  or  harmony,  or  all  the  innate  beauty  and  grace  of 
the  language  of  the  Royal  Prophet, — there  was  not,  could 
not,  be  found  a  trace  in  these  absurd  readings.  And  yet  for 
a  whole  year  this  preposterous  system  of  teaching  Hebrew 
was  allowed  to  disgrace  the  institution  and  insult  the  intel¬ 
ligence  of  the  men  on  whom  it  was  afflicted,  and  who  could 
not  help  themselves ! 

Not  so  had  we  been  taught  in  our  own  dear  Alma  Mater, 
where  the  most  accomplished  Rabbi  to  be  had  in  the  land 
was  called  in  and  well  paid  to  initiate  us  into  the  first  ele¬ 
ments  of  the  inspired  tongue.  The  very  phrase  as  it  flowed 
from  his  lips  impressed  itself  on  our  memory  ;  its  very  har¬ 
mony  made  us  desirous  of  possessing  the  language  and  re¬ 
solved  to  master  all  its  difficulties. 

Superiors  of  colleges,  then,  who  are  thoroughly  in  earnest 
about  having  their  work  done  and  well  done,  will  see  to  it 
that  those  who  cooperate  with  them  in  their  most  important 
labors,  shall  be  not  only  thoroughly  in  earnest,  like  them¬ 
selves,  but  thoroughly  competent,  as  well,  to  do  the  work 
they  take  in  hand. 

They  are  aware  that  the  mental  education  of  every  boy 
intrusted  to  them,  is  like  the  planning  and  rearing  of  an 
edifice  destined  to  last  forever :  they  know,  therefore,  that 


260 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


the  foundations  must  be  carefully  and  solidly  laid,  if  they 
would  have  the  superstructure  stand.  For,  in  the  name  of 
common  sense,  what  can  you  build  on  foundations  which 
are  themselves,  without  substance,  solidity  or  cohesion  \ 

Irreparable  wrong  of  employing  Incompetent  Teachers  for 

Beginners. 

Hence,  the  absurdity,  the  crying  injustice  to  both  parents 
and  pupils,  of  giving  the  charge  of  grammar  schools  or  ele¬ 
mentary  schools  in  any  educational  establishment,  to  men 
who  are  not  perfectly  masters  of  the  branches  to  be  taught 
therein.  An  uncommonly  clever  boy  will  always  manage, 
if  he  be  at  all  intent  on  learning,  to  pick  up  from  his  own 
reading  and  reflections,  enough  to  make  up  the  deficiency 
in  his  master’s  knowledge  or  method.  Indeed,  such  boys 
learn  but  little  from  any  but  the  best  masters ;  for  they  are 
pretty  sure  to  be  in  advance  of  his  lessons  and  of  the  major¬ 
ity  of  their  fellow-students. 

Here,  however,  our  plea  is  in  favor  of  the  majority,  or  of 
the  large  minority  in  every  large  class  of  ordinary  intellects. 
Their  intellectual  food  has  to  be  prepared  for  them  with 
great  skill  and  presented  in  form  and  quantity  suited  to 
their  mental  capacity  and  appetite. 

This  large  minority  is  made  up,  most  frequently,  of  the 
very  men  who  will  one  day  be  the  solid,  influential  men  of 
every  profession.  They  are  not,  while  at  school,  the  quick, 
the  brilliant,  or  the  clever  men;  they  are,  as  experience 
shows,  the  men  who  are  slow,  serious,  studious,  and  sure 
to  succeed  in  the  end.  We  have  seen  so  many  of  these 
brilliant  and  dazzling  college  geniuses,  come  to  nought  in 
mature  age,  like  these  marvelous  plants  of  Java  and  Suma¬ 
tra  which  grow  up  to  their  full  perfection  in  a  single  night, 
expand  their  bright  flowers  to  the  morning  sun,  and  droop 
and  wither  before  it  has  set.  Their  slower  and  less  shining 
companions  of  the  forest,  are  more  timid  in  putting  forth 
their  early  shoots,  and  less  ambitious  to  display  their  rapid 
growth  and  flowering  pride.  The  palms  which  furnish  food 


THOROUGHNESS,  EARNESTNESS,  HEARTINESS!  201 


to  man,  the  oaks  and  other  forest  trees  which  go  to  build 
his  home  and  his  fleets,  are  the  growth  of  years.  All 
nature’s  most  perfect  and  durable  works  are  the  slow  and 
gradual  produce  of  time. 

Do  not  neglect  the  Slow  Many  for  the  Clever  Few. 

It  would,  then,  be  both  want  of  wisdom  and  want  of  jus¬ 
tice  in  any  teacher  to  proportion  his  pains  to  the  uncommon 
capacity  of  the  few,  while  neglecting  the  need  and  claims 
of  the  many.  And,  surely,  it  can  be  neither  wise,  nor  just, 
nor  prudent  in  the  faculty  of  any  great  institution  to  pro¬ 
vide  the  more  advanced  pupils  with  skilled  and  experienced 
talent,  while  leaving  the  beginners  to  the  mercy  of  mere 
tyros  or  blockheads. 

It  is,  then,  the  interest  and  duty  of  the  father  to  be  most 
solicitous  about  the  progress  of  his  boy  during  this  early 
stage  of  college  study,  and  to  inquire  conscientiously  into 
the  quality  of  the  instruction  given  him  in  every  branch. 
Just  as  he  would  be  most  careful  to  watch  over  the  moral 
purity  of  the  young  student  and  to  inquire  into  his  progress 
in  self-restraint  and  self-denial,  even  so  must  he  make  sure 
that  he  is  taught  what  is  promised,  that  he  learns  thorough¬ 
ly  what  he  is  taught,  and  that  he  does  not  acquire  at  the 
very  beginning  of  his  intellectual  life,  these  habits  of  mental 
indolence  and  inaccuracy,  which  are  scarcely  less  fatal  to 
professional  success,  than  the  kindred  moral  habits  are  to 
solid  virtue. 

We  repeat  it,  therefore:  this  thoroughness,  earnestness, 
heartiness,  are  necessary  in  the  men  who  take  upon  them¬ 
selves  the  all-important  task  of  guiding  boys  in  the  very 
first  stages  of  classical  education.  The  “  indescribable 
zest”  mentioned  in  the  last  extract,  and  the  “ strange  joy” 
felt  by  children  and  youths  who  climb  a  high  mountain  for 
the  first  time,  and  look  down  from  the  summit  on  some 
glorious  and  untrodden  region  beyond,  can  never  be  the 
feeling  of  such  as  follow  the  guidance  of  those  who  cannot 
climb,  and  to  whom  the  most  modest  literary  eminence 


262 


TRUE  MEN  AS-  WE  NEED  THEM. 


is  as  formidable  a  height  as  Mont  Blanc  or  the  Matter¬ 
horn. 

Who  of  us,  in  boyhood  and  in  early  youth,  had  not  ex¬ 
perienced  that  same  u indescribable  zest”  for  facing  impos¬ 
sible  difficulties,  as  we  ran  along  beside  a  loved  master  or 
parent  over  the  broad  sunny  fields  or  up  some  wooded  hill¬ 
side  ?  Did  not  the  spirit  which  gave  buoyancy  and  strength 
to  every  limb  come  from  the  companionship  and  cheering 
words  of  the  man  we  loved  dearest  on  earth  ?  And  was  not 
“the  strange  joy”  of  difficulty  overcome  and  success  ac¬ 
complished  begotten  by  his  smile  and  his  happiness  in  our 
efforts  ? 

The  Teacher’ s  Enthusiasm ,  how  Contagious  ! 

Our  readers  will  pardon  us  one  reminiscence,  all  the  more 
readily  that  no  personal  vanity  mingles  with  the  memories  it 
calls  up.  In  the  ever-dear  and  venerable  institution  which 
opened  its  arms  to  us,  a  stranger  and  an  orphan,  nearly  half 
a  century  ago,  we  found  men  the  exact  counterparts  of  Dr. 
Arnold,  his  equals,  assuredly,  if  not  his  superiors,  in  disin¬ 
terestedness  and  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  their  holy  call¬ 
ing,  and  not  his  inferiors  in  secular  or  sacred  knowledge  ; — 
men,  belonging  by  their  birth  to  the  first  families  in  the  land, 
and  deeming  it  more  than  royal  honor  to  serve  God  in  their 
lowly  and  obscure  labor  of  teaching  youth,  without  other 
stipend  than  the  roof  above  them  and  their  humble  garb  of 
priestly  poverty  ;  men  whose  heart  and  soul  were  in  their 
work,  and  who  knew  how  to  kindle  in  our  young  hearts  an 
ardent  zeal  for  our  own  advancement,  as  well  as  a  deep  re¬ 
spect  and  lasting  attachment  toward  themselves. 

If,  looking  back  now  and  comparing  our  own  experiences 
and  observations,  we  are  forced  to  give  to  the  great  school 
to  which  we  owe  everything  under  God,  the  tribute  of  an 
admiration  which  only  increases  with  each  succeeding  year, 
— it  is  because  we  recall  how  our  dear  masters  labored  to 
infuse  into  every  student  among  their  five  hundred  the 
hearty  love  of  study  and  the  no  less  hearty  love  of  piety. 


CLASSICAL  STUDIES  A  TRAINING  FOR  MAN. 


263 


That  there  should  be,  in  a  school  over  which  such  men  pre¬ 
sided,  whose  whole  life  was  the  “Imitation  of  Christ”  in 
practice,  an  atmosphere  of  genuine  purity  and  piety,  was 
natural ;  but  there  was,  at  the  same  time,  an  atmosphere  of 
earnest  emulation  for  study.  In  one  other  house — in  France 
and  beneath  the  very  shadow  of  the  ancient  castle  of  the 
Laval-Montmorencys,  did  we  see  an  equal  zest  for  study, 
and,  as  should  be  expected,  an  incomparable  fervor  of 
piety, — as  if  the  name  of  the  great  bishop  who  had  founded 
the  time-honored  institution  far  away  on  the  banks  of  the 
St.  Lawrence,  drew  down  a  special  and  an  equal  blessing  on 
it  and  on  the  great  seminary  that  flourished  beneath  the 
shadow  of  his  ancestral  halls. 

We  cannot  help,  in  reading  the  life  of  Dr.  Arnold,  and 
remembering  the  man  who  above  all  others  crowned  the 
work  of  Francis  De  Laval-Montmorency,  *  seeing  in  our 
own  admired  master  every  excellence  set  forth  by  the 
biographer  in  the  renowned  head-master  of  Laleliam  and 
Rugby.  He  was  our  companion  in  our  studies,  laboring 
continually  with  us,  making  the  labor  light  not  only  by  that 
high  intelligence  which  could  explain,  simplify,  and  illumine 
what  was  most  difficult  and  abstruse,  but  by  making  the 
labor  joyous  by  his  bright  wit  and  sunny  spirit. 

Classical  Studies  a  Training  for  the  Public  Man. 

College  or  university  education  is,  of  course,  specially  de¬ 
signed  to  train  men  for  every  walk  of  professional  and  pub¬ 
lic  life.  It  is  not  only  churchmen,  statesmen,  and  military 
men,  but  lawyers,  physicians,  great  architects  and  engi¬ 
neers,  great  manufacturers  and  merchants,  and  men  of  in¬ 
dependent  wealth  and  position,  who  find  in  such  schools 
the  varied  knowledge  and  ripe  science  they  need, — but  men 
of  the  most  varied  avocations,  and  of  every  social  rank  are 
fitted  by  such  training, — when  it  really  is  what  it  prof  esses 
to  be, — to  work  successfully  and  attain  eminence  in  any  use¬ 
ful  pursuit. 

*  Tlie  late  Very  Reverend  Louis  Jacques  Casault,  D.D.,  who  obtained  the  erec¬ 
tion  of  Laval  University,  Quebec. 


264 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


A  young  man  wlio  has  gone  through  a  complete  and  seri¬ 
ous  college  or  university  course,  under  masters  who  were, 
not  shams,  but  thoroughly  able  to  teach  whatever  they  pro¬ 
fessed,  is  ready,  on  returning  to  his  family,  to  enter  upon 
any  career  that  his  talents,  his  inclination,  may  suit  him 
for,  or  the  will  of  his  parents  may  open  to  him. 

The  Parents  to  blame  for  the  Failure  of  their  Sons. 

That  many  do  not  bring  from  several  years  spent  in  col¬ 
lege,  the  accomplishments  and  business  aptitudes  for  which 
their  parents  were  so  anxious, — is  due  to  a  variety  of  causes, 
one  of  which,  and  not  unfrequently  the  chief  cause,  is  the 
parents’  own  want  of  consistency. 

Let  us  explain  this.  As  we  have  said  above,  the  work  of 
education  is  and  ever  should  be, — in  order  to  be  successful, 
— the  joint  work  of  teachers  and  parents.  This  holds  true 
of  college  training  fully  as  much  as  of  grammar-school 
learning.  Indeed,  we  should  rather  say,  that  to  make  a 
college  course  perfectly  successful  there  is  need  of  a  more 
watchful,  more  cordial,  and  more  constant  cooperation  on 
the  part  of  the  father. 

When  you  send  your  boy  to  the  parish  or  the  public 
school  in  order  that  he  may  get  a  thorough  knowledge  of 
what  will  tit  him  for  a  trade  or  for  commercial  business, 
both  you  and  he,  as  well  as  his  teachers,  perfectly  under¬ 
stand  what  the  boy  wants  in  the  way  of  learning  and  what 
he  is  to  do  with  it.  He  gets  it  within  the  expected  time, 
and  is  forthwith  apprenticed  to  his  proper  business. 

This  cannot  be  done  with  boys  sent  to  college.  You 
cannot  determine  beforehand,  no  more  than  the  boy  can 
himself,  what  profession  he  will  embrace  once  his  college 
course  is  completed.  For  a  college  course  is  by  its  nature 
intended  to  prepare  young  men  for  the  learned  professions, 
the  priesthood,  the  law,  and  medicine.*  Very,  very  rarely 


*  Hence  tlie  anomaly, — a  most  calamitous  one, — of  having  a  “Commercial 
course  ”  in  some  of  our  colleges.  Necessity  alone, — the  necessity  of  affording  to 
children  coming  from  Central  and  South  America  a  school  where  they  can  be 


VOCA TIOJSTS  PREMATUREL  Y  CHOSEN  RARER  Y BLESSED.  265 

does  it  happen  that  any  one  can  predict  of  a  boy  who  enters 
upon  the  long  and  important  course  of  college  education, 
that  he  will  to  a  certainty  become  a  priest, — and  so  of  any 
of  the  other  professions. 

Besides,  the  Church,  with  the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
and  the  experience  of  eighteen  centuries  to  enlighten  her  on 
the  ways  of  men,  — has  ever  had  a  most  prudent  care  of  col¬ 
lege  youth, — the  flower  of  her  children.  She  knows  that, 
as  it  is  for  the  sacred  ministry, — so  is  it  for  each  of  the 
secular  professions, — God  must  call  to  its  duties  those  who 
are  to  fulfill  them  without  deadly  peril  to  themselves  and 
with  all  usefulness  to  others.  She  has  well-approved  rules 
for  the  guidance  of  her  ministers  in  determining  who  is 
called  and  who  is  not,  as  well  as  for  the  direction  of  the 
young  men,  who,  at  the  close  of  their  college  studies,  must 
elect  what  path  they  are  to  pursue  in  order  to  serve  God  in 
conformity  with  His  will  and  their  own  intellectual  and 
moral  capacity. 

W  lien  your  JSon  can  choose  under  standingly . 

And  it  is  only  at  the  termination  of  these  studies  that 
such  an  election  can  be  made  with  any  degree  of  wisdom. 
Most  unwise, — to  say  the  least  of  it, — is  the  conduct  of  pa¬ 
rents,  who,  having  set  their  hearts  upon  having  their  son  a 
priest,  leave  him  no  freedom  in  his  own  choice,  and  thus  do 
him*  moral  violence  to  impel  him  into  a  career  for  which  he 
has  neither  vocation  nor  aptitude.  What  can  they  expect 
but  misery  to  him  and  bitterness  of  heart  for  themselves, 
from  a  course  so  opposed  to  conscience  and  right  reason  ? 

given  a  business  education  while  having  their  faith  protected, — can  excuse  the 
temporary  existence  of  such  a  strange  and  baneful  division  of  studies. 

If  our  trained  professional  educators  of  the  highest  grade  thus  take  on  them¬ 
selves  to  teach  “  book-keeping,”  etc.,  can  they  be  justly  surprised  or  offended,  if 
men  destined  professedly,  to  give  nothing  but  commercial  or  business  training, 
should  usurp  the  higher  functions  of  classical  and  university  education?  It 
will  not  do  to  say  Ne  sutor  ultra  crepidam.  In  truth  the  essentially  important 
is  that  as  in  skilled  mechanical  labor,  so  in  skilled  intellectual  labor  and  profes¬ 
sional  training,  every  one  should  qualify  himself  to  do  thoroughly  what  he 
promises,  and  not  undertake  what  he  is  not  qualified  to  perform. 


266 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


We  are  not,  of  course,  denying  that  it  is  a  most  laudable 
desire  in  parents  to  have  their  sons  advanced  to  the  priestly 
office.  Too  many  and  too  touching  traditions  connected 
with  our  native  country  and  race,  have  cast  a  halo  around 
fathers  and  mothers  who  sacrificed  everything  and  endured 
the  utmost  of  privation  to  see  their  child  ministering  at  the 
dear  altars  of  their  faith.  But  we  are  only  pleading  here, — 
and  in  the  interest  of  both  the  parents  and  their  sons, — the 
necessity  of  not  considering  their  becoming  priests  a  fore¬ 
gone  conclusion.  The  circumstances  which  made  the  desire 
of  such  parents  not  only  heroic,  but  almost  a  sure  sign  of 
the  divine  will,  have  passed  away  with  the  secular  persecu¬ 
tion  that  begat  them.  In  the  English-speaking  world,  there 
is  now  perfect  freedom.  Hence  it  is,  that  the  will  of  God 
must  have  precedence  of  the  desire  of  parents  in  a  matter 
where  the  divine  honor,  and  the  dearest  interests  of  religion 
are  so  nearly  concerned. 

How  sacredly  College  Students  should  be  Shielded 

from  Evil. 

What  is  most  important  for  parents,  who  entertain  such 
a  praiseworthy  ambition, — and  what  is  to  our  immediate 
purpose  at  present, — is,  that  every  father  who  sends  his  son 
to  college  with  such  a  hope,  should  take  especial  care  not  to 
foster  in  his  child’ s  soul  inclinations  or  habits  that  would 
render  him  unfit  not  only  for  the  sacred  ministry,  but  for 
any  profession  or  public  trust. 

We  must  be  pardoned,  if  we  speak  more  plainly  and  say 
here  how  very  little  care  certain  parents  take,  during  vaca¬ 
tions  from  college  studies,  to  preserve  their  sons  from  amuse¬ 
ments  and  associations  that  are  utterly  irreconcilable  with 
their  avowed  purpose.  How  often  have  not  the  heads  of 
colleges  to  mourn  over  the  total  ruin  of  piety  and  innocence 
effected  during  a  single  vacation  by  the  blind  indifference 
or  criminal  indulgence  of  parents !  The  habits  of  self-de¬ 
nial  and  self-control  contracted  during  ten  months  of  severe 
discipline  and  courageous  efforts  at  self-improvement,  are 


PECULIAR  DIFFICULTIES  OF  OUR  COLLEGES. 


267 


lost  in  a  single  month,  or  a  single  week,  and  superseded  by 
habits  which  we  do  not  dare  to  describe.  And  yet,  these 
very  parents  will  be  the  first  to  cast  on  the  college  the  blame 
which  belongs  solely  to  the  parental  home  and  its  utter 
want  of  discipline ! 

Parents  who  have  themselves  had  the  benefit  of  a  thor¬ 
ough  university  training  understand  all  this  well,  and  are 
careful  to  sustain  the  college  authorities,  even  when  every¬ 
thing  does  not  please  them  in  the  way  their  boys  are  get¬ 
ting  on.  They  are  also  most  careful  to  encourage  and  direct 
the  praiseworthy  love  of  self-improvement  in  the  latter, — 
feeling  sure  the  while,  that  where  a  boy  has  talent  and 
application,  his  college  course  will  make  a  man  of  him,  in 
spite  of  his  professor’s  shortcomings. 

Another  cause  of  the  baneful  impatience  of  parents  is  the 
necessity  which  compels  our  colleges  to  admit,  side  by  side 
with  the  undergraduates,  very  young  boys,  and,  therefore, 
to  have  in  a  house  professedly  devoted  to  the  higher  classi¬ 
cal  and  university  studies, — not  only  grammar  schools  for 
teaching  Greek  and  Latin,  as  preparatory  to  Humanities, 
Rhetoric,  and  Philosophy,  —  but  an  English  elementary 
course  preparatory  to  the  grammar  schools  themselves. 
This  gives  the  college  a  false  position  in  the  eyes  of  the 
parents,  especially  when  these  send  their  children  very 
young,  and  when  they  are  themselves  uneducated,  or,  at 
any  rate,  unacquainted  with  the  ancient  classics. 

Too  much  Demanded  of  our  Colleges. 

They  see  their  next-door  neighbor’ s  boys,  who  are  trained 
in  the  town  school,  not  seldom  more  advanced  in  English, 
arithmetic,  geography,  reading,  writing,  etc.,  than  their 
own  boys  of  the  same  age  at  college ;  and  then,  at  a  time 
when  the  neighbor’s  boy  has  completed  his  course  at  the 
public  school,  and  is  entering  on  business,  their  boy  is  pain¬ 
fully  toiling  through  elementary  Latin,  and  later  plodding 
still  more  laboriously  through  elementary  Greek.  They, 
judging  things  from  their  own  standard,  do  not  see  and 


268 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


cannot  appreciate  the  progress  their  son  has  made  in  all 
these  years.  They  hear  their  illiterate  acquaintance  say — 
they,  perhaps,  hear  their  boy  himself  saying,  “  What  is  the 
use  of  Greek  and  Latin?  Why  spend  so  much  time  and 
spend  so  much  money  in  learning,  or  trying  to  learn,  dead 
languages,  while  the  living  English  mother-tongue  is  (ap¬ 
parently)  neglected 

Reasoning  thus,  —  they  are  tempted  to  take  their  boy 
away  in  the  very  middle  of  his  studies,  and  then  blame  the 
college  for  their  own  fatal  blundering.  Now  let  us  look  at 
this  in  the  light  of  common  sense. 

Folly  of  Interrupting  College  Studies . 

There  is  no  tradesman,  no  skilled  mechanic  knowing  from 
his  own  experience  how  much  time  and  labor  it  costs  to  be¬ 
come  a  first-rate  worker  in  any  craft,  but  would  condemn 
such  trifling  with  the  work  of  a  thorough  education.  A 
craftsman  knows  that  a  boy  has  to  undergo  his  apprentice¬ 
ship  to  the  end  in  order  to  be  thoroughly  master  of  what  he 
intends  to  learn.  Nay, — you  will  find  very  few  first-rate 
tradesmen  who  would  not  lengthen  the  term  of  apprenticeship 
rather  than  shorten  it,  so  convinced  are  they  of  the  neces¬ 
sity  of  long  study  and  long  practice  to  acquire  consummate 
skill.  They  would  think  a  man  a  fool  who,  having  bound 
his  son  for  seven  years  to  a  most  important  trade,  would 
take  him  away  at  the  end  of  three  or  five  years  under  the 
pretext  that,  if  the  boy  does  not  know  his  business  by  this 
time,  he  must  be  a  blockhead  or  an  idler,  and  his  master 
not  much  better.  The  common  sense  of  the  average  labor¬ 
ing  man  would  condemn  any  parent  for  thus  trifling  with 
his  boy’s  future. 

Shall  we  set  up  a  standard  utterly  opposed  to  this  un¬ 
erring  common  sense,  when  we  have  to  judge  of  studies  and 
training  that  are,  in  reality,  an  apprenticeship  to  the  most 
important  of  all  arts,  the  highest  of  all  professions  ? 

Let  us  go  a  step  farther  in  this  most  practical  subject. 

The  course  of  nature  is,  that,  under  ordinary  circum- 


UNFORTUNATE  NECESSITIES. 


269 


stances,  boys  until  tlieir  twelfth  or  thirteenth  year  should 
be  prepared  for  college  at  home,  under  the  eye  of  exem¬ 
plary  parents,  enjoying  all  the  blessed  influences  of  the 
family  circle.  Nothing, — so  God  has  ordained  it, — can,  in 
the  ordinary  course  of  life,  take  the  place  of  a  true  Chris¬ 
tian  mother’s  love  in  forming  within  her  home  the  mind 
and  heart  of  her  boys  at  this  early  age.  The  discipline 
established  by  her,  supported  by  the  father’s  whole  author¬ 
ity,  and  perfected  by  his  companionship  with  his  sons, — is 
the  most  priceless  of  blessings  for  the  future  collegian, — the 
future  public  man. 

It  is,  therefore, — speaking  always  with  the  same  reserva¬ 
tions, — an  irreparable  calamity  for  the  boy,  when  he  is 
taken  prematurely  from  beneath  his  mother’s  wing  to  re¬ 
ceive  elsewhere  the  nurture  which  her  love  can  alone  be¬ 
stow  ; — or  when,  deprived  of  a  mother,  or,  again,  when  un¬ 
blessed  by  a  true  Christian  mother, — a  boy  is  cast  almost 
from  childhood  into  the  midst  of  a  hundred  or  more  other 
boys,  like  a  blind  puppy  into  a  pond,  to  swim  and  scramble 
ever  afterward  for  salvation  and  the  life  of  heart  and  spirit. 

Not  all  the  supernatural  devotedness  of  the  best  of  mas¬ 
ters  can  make  up  for  this  privation  of  maternal  love  and  fos¬ 
tering  tenderness. 

When,  however,  a  sad  necessity  imposes  on  our  Catholic 
institutions  these  parental  functions,  it  should  not  be  for¬ 
gotten  that  an  immense  debt  of  gratitude  is  contracted  by 
the  parents,  and  that  abuse  of  our  institutions  is  but  an  un¬ 
graceful  way  of  discharging  it. 

If,  therefore,  you  deem  it  imperative, — because  you  can¬ 
not  obtain  at  home  for  your  young  boys  the  religious  train¬ 
ing  which  you  desire, — to  intrust  them  thus  early  to  priestly 
hands,  make  up  your  mind  at  the  same  time  to  let  the 
young  tree  grow  through  the  remaining  months  of  winter, 
through  the  slow  spring  and  the  stormy  summer,  watching 
and  waiting  patiently  while  the  autumn  of  college-life  is 
ripening  and  perfecting  the  fruits  which  are  to  reward 
your  trustfulness,  and  your  generous  cooperation  in  this 
long  husbandry. 


270 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


It  is  important  to  Benin  Well ;  it  is  infinitely  so  to 

End  Well. 

It  would  be  folly  to  place  tliem  in  a  college  at  so  young  an 
age,  if  you  did  not  intend  to  keep  them  there  to  the  end. 
It  would  be  worse  folly  to  take  them  out  in  the  middle  of 
their  studies,  in  order  to  put  them  to  business,  or  under  the 
pretense  that  they  have  learned  enough.  The  worst  folly 
of  all  would  be  to  interrupt  the  work  of  their  thorough  cul¬ 
ture,  just  as  the  college  course  was  near  its  close.  You 
would  thereby  resemble  the  man  who  had  watched  his 
peach  tree  blossoming,  and  the  fruit  growing  after  the  blos¬ 
som  ;  and  who,  becoming  weary  of  long  waiting,  would 
pluck  the  fruit  while  still  green,  and  before  the  golden  sun 
of  autumn  had  matured  and  mellowed  it.  If  you  have  but 
bitter  and  unsavory  fruit  on  your  table,  after  all  your  labor 
and  waiting,  who  is  to  blame  but  yourself  ? 

Think  well,  then,  before  you  determine  fully  to  give  your 
child  the  benefit,  the  priceless  benefit,  of  a  college  educa¬ 
tion  ;  think  ten  times  more  seriously  before  you  determine 
to  take  him  away  in  the  middle  of  his  course ;  but  let  no 
consideration  induce  you  to  withdraw  him  when  he  is  in  the 
last  crowning  years  of  his  intellectual  and  moral  training. 

The  Distinction  between  a  College  Course  and  a  University 

Course  of  Studies. 

This  is  the  proper  place  for  pointing  out  the  essential 
but  little-understood  difference  between  a  complete  college 
course  and  a  university  course  proper.  The  former  aims  at 
giving  such  complete  and  thorough  instruction  in  ancient 
and  modern  letters,  in  history,  philosophy,  and  the  sciences, 
as  to  enable  the  student  at  its  close,  to  begin  forthwith  the 
special  study  of  any  of  the  great  professions  of  theology,  law, 
or  medicine.  This  was  formerly  and  is  still  characteris¬ 
tic  of  the  colleges  or  college-schools  founded  and  patronized 
by  the  Church, — the  parent  of  university  education. 


THE  COLLEGE  PREPARES  FOR  THE  UNIVERSITY.  271 

The  university,  as  distinguished  from  the  college,  gave 
instruction  in  these  learned  professions,  enabling  their  re¬ 
spective  students  to  become,  successively  and  at  determined 
stages  of  their  course,  bachelors,  masters  or  licentiates,  and 
doctors,  in  theology,  ecclesiastical  and  civil  law,  or  in 
medicine. 

Thus,  to  borrow  an  illustration  from  the  great  Catholic 
Laval  University,  in  Quebec  ; — the  Seminary  of  Quebec,  out 
of  which  the  Laval  University  has  grown,  as  the  crown  of 
ripe  dates  from  the  palm  tree, — has  its  collegiate  school 
which,  at  the  end  of  the  full  course  of  literary  and  scientific 
instruction,  qualifies  the  students  by  a  searching  oral  and 
written  examination  to  become  bachelors  of  arts,  or  bache¬ 
lors  of  letters,  or  bachelors  of  sciences,  according  to  their 
proficiency  in  all  the  branches  taught,  or  to  their  relative 
superiority  in  letters  or  in  the  sciences,  while  falling  below 
the  necessary  degree  of  excellence  in  the  other  cognate 
branches. 

The  bachelor’s  degree  confers  on  the  graduate  the  right 
to  have  his  name  registered  forthwith  for  any  of  the  three 
university  courses  of  theology,  law,  and  medicine,  which  he 
elects  to  follow.  Over  each  each  of  these  courses  presides 
a  board  of  professors  called,  collectively,  the  faculty  ;  each 
faculty  confers  degrees  in  its  respective  branch  ;  and  each 
has  a  special  register  on  which  is  solemnly  inscribed  the 
name  of  each  student  duly  qualified,  this  ceremony  being 
called  matriculation. 

We  should  add,  that  the  collegiate  school  ( Petit  Semin- 
air  e)  is  charged  with  the  Department  of  Arts  or  that  which, 
besides  preparing,  as  above  stated,  all  students  for  the  uni¬ 
versity  courses  proper,  perfects  them  in  ancient  and  modern 
literature,  and  the  mathematical  and  physical  sciences, 
enabling  them  not  only  to  acquire  the  degree  of  proficiency 
therein  necessary  for  the  bachelor’s  degree,  but  further 
perfecting  them  so  as  to  become  themselves  masters  in  the 
great  art  of  teaching  and  forming  others  in  the  professor’s 
chair. 

Parents,  as  well  as  all  intelligent  readers,  will  appreciate 


272 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


the  exceeding  care  taken  by  the  Church  in  past  ages  and  at 
present,  to  prepare  for  their  high  and  holy  duties  not  only 
the  priest  who  has  to  be  the  religious  guide  and  teacher  of 
others,  but  the  lawyer  and  the  magistrate  who  have  to  dis¬ 
cuss  and  administer  the  laws  of  the  State,  and  the  physician 
in  whose  hands  are  placed  the  health,  the  life,  the  honor  of 
families.  We  need  not  say  that  the  legislator,  the  states¬ 
man  and  the  publicist  find  also  in  the  law  school  the  science 
which  can  alone  surely  guide  them  in  laboring  by  voice  and 
pen  for  the  dearest  interests  of  their  own  nationality,  and 
of  the  entire  brotherhood  of  nations. 

Fathers  who  think  of  all  this  in  putting  their  sons  to  col¬ 
lege,  should,  therefore,  know  that  the  college  is  itself  in  its 
most  conscientious  completeness,  but  a  preparation  for  what 
is  or  must  be,  under  one  name  or  another,  the  university 
proper  or  its  equivalent. 

A  Thorough  Education  jits  one  for  Thorough  Work. 

You  wish  to  see  your  son  a  priest  ;  but  you  would  not 
have  him  other  than  a  priest  fit  to  teach  all  sacred  science, 
and  fit,  as  well,  to  appreciate  the  truth  of  all  secular  science. 
Do  not  say  that  the  perspective  of  all  these  long  years  of 
study  and  of  preparation  after  preparation,  is  only  fit  to 
discourage  both  parents  and  students.  After  having  gone 
through  the  ordeal  ourselves,  and  having  had  a  long 
subsequent  experience  in  the  ministry, — we  are  forced  to 
say  most  earnestly, — that  our  fear  is  not  that  the  student 
of  theology  will  become  a  priest  too  late  or  enter  at  too  ripe 
an  age  on  the  awful  duties  of  his  new  office  ;  our  fear  could 
only  be  to  see  him  become  too  soon  the  teacher  and  guide 
of  others,  without  having  gathered  the  fruit  of  knowledge  in 
its  delicious  maturity,  when  he  could  himself  appreciate  its 
qualities  and  commend  them  to  the  taste  of  his  hearers. 

A  high-minded  Christian  father,  Avho  is  guided  in  his  de¬ 
sires  and  his  judgments  by  such  lofty  views  as  these,  will 
feel  himself  richly  rewarded  at  seeing  his  son  enter  public 
life  armed  with  that  sure  scientific  knowledge,  which  is  a 


AN  ACCOMPLISHED  SON,  THE  PARENTS'  REWARD.  273 

mighty  power  to  sway  other  men.  This  very  knowledge 
will  enable  the  priest,  the  lawyer,  the  physician,  the  scien¬ 
tist,  the  publicist,  or  the  artist, — to  make  his  mark  at  once. 
For,  the  amount  of  good  done  is  not  measured  by  time,  but 
by  the  perfection  with  which  it  is  accomplished. 

It  is  not  necessary  that  a  priest  should  labor  many  years, 
but  that  he  should  labor  well  and  to  good  purpose.  Our 
Great  High  Priest  lived  thirty  years  in  the  obscurity,  toil, 
and  subjection  of  Nazareth  ;  He  labored  in  public  only  three 
years  ;  and  His  praise  in  the  Gospel  is  :  “He  hath  done  all 
things  well ;  He  hath  made  both  the  deaf  to  hear,  and  the 
dumb  to  speak.”  * 

For  every  son  of  yours,  whether  priest  or  layman,  may 
your  sweetest  reward  be  to  hear  such  praise  from  the  lips 
of  the  good  and  the  great ! 

The  outcry  against  Greek  and  Latin . 

If  we  have  not  wearied  you  outright,  dear  reader,  we 
would  fain  add  a  few  words  in  this  place,  and  before  con¬ 
cluding  this  chapter,  on  the  opposition  to  the  teaching  of 
Greek  and  Latin  in  our  modern  colleges.  Parents  who  hear 
the  senseless  outcry  made  on  this  subject,  ought  to  know 
precisely  both  the  motives  of  those  who  make  it  and  the 
solid  reasons  on  which  is  founded  the  universal  practice  of 
Christian  schools  for  so  many  centuries. 

When  the  opponents  of  classical  education  have  asserted 
noisily,  that  Greek  and  Latin  are  4  ‘  dead  languages,  ’  ’  and 
that  the  youth  of  the  nineteenth  century  should  not  waste 
on  studying  the  literary  remains  of  dead  nations  so  many 
precious  years,  which  were  more  usefully  bestowed  in  mas¬ 
tering  living  literatures, — they  fancy  that  to  this  implied 
argument  there  is  no  possible  answer. 

It  is,  however,  a  manifest  fallacy.  The  Greek  and  the  Latin 
are  not,  and  never  have  been,  dead  languages  in  the  sense 
in  which  our  opponents  would  have  it  understood.  Till 
the  downfall  of  the  Greek  Empire  in  1453,  both  the  classic 


18 


*  St.  Mark,  vii.  37. 


274 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


language  of  Demosthenes  and  Plato,  and  the  local  popular 
dialects,  had  never  ceased  to  be  in  use, — the  former  in  the 
numerous  schools  of  the  East,  the  latter  among  all  classes 
in  ordinary  conversation.  Even  now,  after  more  than  four 
centuries  of  forced  intellectual  sterility  much  more  than  of 
religious  intolerance,  the  vernacular  Greek  of  Athens  is 
nearer  to  the  exquisite  dialect  of  the  Attic  masters,  than 
the  vernacular  Italian  is  to  the  tongue  of  Cicero.  And  yet^ 
the  very  best  modern  scholars  have  good  reason  for  affirm¬ 
ing  that  the  Italian  spoken  throughout  the  Peninsula  is  not 
a  corruption  of  the  Latin,  but  a  living  popular  language 
coeval  with  the  dialect  of  Latium,  and  ever  spoken  side  by 
side  with  the  latter,  when  it  had  become  the  polished  and 
perfected  idiom  of  the  masters  of  Pome  and  of  Italy.  Where¬ 
fore  it  can  be  said,  as  a  thing  historically  probable,  if  not 
certain,  that,  although  since  the  downfall  of  Constantinople 
and  of  living  Greek  literature,  the  pure  idiom  of  Attica 
ceased  to  be  heard  in  the  schools  of  oppressed  Greece,  still 
it  continued  to  be  spoken  in  its  popular  form  everywhere, 
and  to  be  understood  by  every  educated  person.  Nor  did 
all  the  learned  men  of  Greece  migrate  to  Western  Europe 
after  May  the  29th,  1453. 

How  much  more  certain  and  undeniable  is  it  that  the 
Latin  tongue,  the  official  dialect  of  Pome  and  its  govern¬ 
ment,  the  cherished  idiom  of  its  poets,  its  orators  and  its 
historians,  never,  for  one  year  or  one  day,  ceased, — even 
after  the  downfall  of  the  Western  Poman  Empire, — to  be  the 
language  of  the  schools,  the  law  courts,  the  government, 
and,  especially,  of  the  Church  in  her  liturgy  and  her  official 
teachings  and  administration.  Pome, — and  the  great  intel¬ 
lectual  centers  created  by  Christian  Pome  .throughout  her 
vast  empire, — have  never  at  any  time  till  now  ceased  to  speak 
as  a  living  language  the  tongue  of  Cicero,  Livy,  and  Horace. 

Thus,  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say,  that  wide-spread  as 
was  the  use  of  the  Latin  tongue  in  the  days  of  Cicero,  and 
apart  from  the  mere  perfection  or  elegance  of  form, — its  use 
was  even  more  general  in  Italy  and  throughout  Western 
Europe  in  the  days  of  Leo  X. 


SECRET  OF  THE  OUTCRY  AGAINST  LATIN 


275 


Disuse  of  the  Latin  in  Protestant  Countries. 

Since  the  religious  disruption  caused,  at  that  epoch,  by 
Luther  and  his  associates, — the  Latin  as  the  language  of  the 
schools  and  universities,  as  that  of  the  great  learned  pro¬ 
fessions,  and  as  the  medium  of  official  and  epistolary  in¬ 
tercourse,  has  been  abandoned  by  Protestants,  precisely 
because  it  was  the  language  of  Christian  Pome.  In  our 
own  day,  moreover,  rationalists  and  revolutionists  have 
been  unanimous  in  raising  an  outcry  against  the  culture  of 
the  ancient  literatures. 

But  the  sounder  public  opinion  of  both  Europe  and 
America  does  not  favor  this  sacrifice  of  the  Greek  and  Latin 
to  modern  theories  of  progress  and  civilization.  And  we 
trust  the  day  is  far  distant  when  the  study  of  the  classic 
masterpieces  of  Italian  and  Grecian  genius  shall  cease  to 
form  the  chief  basis  of  high  literary  studies. 

Indeed,  in  European  countries  that  we  need  not  name,  one 
of  the  features  of  the  recent  wholesale  persecutions  against 
the  Catholic  Church,  was  the  substitution  of  living  lan¬ 
guages  for  Latin  and  Greek,  the  compulsory  education  of 
clerical  students  in  the  State  schools,  and  the  consequent 
abolition  of  all  special  seminaries  for  the  training  of  Catho¬ 
lic  youth. 

Efforts  to  destroy  Priestly  Vocations  and  Education. 

Thereby  the  enemy  showed  that  he  understood  the  teach¬ 
ing  of  the  Classics  and  the  use  of  Latin  and  Greek  to  be  one 
of  the  great  instruments  of  the  Church  not  only  in  her  own 
special  work  of  teaching  and  enlightening,  but  in  the  more 
general  labor  of  promoting  the  true  civilization  of  the  race. 
We  mean,  of  course,  that  in  all  Christian  schools  due  prom¬ 
inence  should  be  given  to  the  Christian  classics, — to  the 
writings  of  the  early  Greek  and  Latin  Fathers,  whose  beau¬ 
ties  of  thought  and  diction  are  all  the  more  thoroughly  en¬ 
joyed,  when  a  thorough  Christian  and  a  thorough  scholar 


276 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


fills  the  professor’s  chair,  and  guides  the  young  minds  he  is 
training  so  as  to  see  and  admire  only  what  is  truly  beauti¬ 
ful  and  admirable. 

Let  Catholic  parents  remember,  that  from  the  day  which 
would  see  Latin  and  Greek  banished  from  our  colleges 
would  date  the  ruin  of  all  Christian  education,  the  ruin  of 
the  priesthood,  and  the  beginning  for  the  Christian  Church 
of  a  darker  era  than  that  of  Julian  the  Apostate.  For  the 
intellectual  darkness  would  not  be  measured  by  one  man’s 
life,  nor  limited  to  one  generation. 

What  we  need  in  our  Colleges  is, — not  that  the  study  of 
modern  languages  shall  supersede  that  of  the  ancient  Clas¬ 
sics,  and  that  the  cultivation  of  mathematical  and  physical 
science  shall  take  the  place  given  hitherto  to  the  teaching 
of  ancient  and  ecclesiastical  history,— but  that  extraordi¬ 
nary  and  united  efforts  shall  be  made  to  teach  the  Classics 
thoroughly,  to  throw  such  interest  into  the  study  of  the 
ancient  literatures  and  histories,  that  young  men  shall  be 
able  to  master  them,  to  get  enamored  of  them,  and  to  cher¬ 
ish  the  love  of  them  ever  afterward. 

True  Catholic  Education  combines  the  Ancient  and  the 

Modern. 

• 

Do  we  mean  that  thereby  they  shall  neglect  their  own 
mother-tongue,  or  modern  languages,  or  the  mathematic 
and  physical  sciences,  without  which  a  scholar  is  only  half 
a  scholar  ?  Most  certainly  not.  We  cannot  forget  that  the 
training  given  in  our  own  dear  Alma  Mater  combined  a 
thorough  knowledge  of  both  classical  and  scientific  lore. 
And  we  are  proud  to  see,  that  with  the  new  responsibilities 
assumed  by  her  in  organizing  a  university  course  complete 
in  every  department,  the  old  equal  love  for  the  culture  of 
antiquity  and  that  of  the  ripest  science  of  our  times  still 
continues  to  burn  with  undiminished  fervor. 

It  ought  also  to  be  well  understood,  that  neither  a 
thorough  mastery  of  the  ancient  classics,  nor  the  slight 
acquaintance  with  the  Latin  tongue  required  for  the  study 


THE  CHURCH,  THE  PARENT  OF  HIGH  EDUCATION.  277 

of  theology  and  the  discharge  of  the  priestly  functions,  has 
ever  been,  in  the  judgment  of  the  Church,  a  sufficient  intel¬ 
lectual  education.  The  extraordinary  sacrifices  which  she 
makes  yearly  in  lands,  where  the  revolution  has  stripped 
her  of  everything,  to  create  or  to  sustain  universities  wor¬ 
thy  of  being  in  the  foremost  rank  of  true  science,  are  a 
most  eloquent  proof  of  the  desire  she  has  that  her  priests 
shall  be  as  superior  in  learning  as  she  wills  them  to  be  supe¬ 
rior  in  moral  excellence. 

The  Clerical  Standard  of  Science . 

Surely  a  clergyman,  mixing  in  daily  intercourse  with  men 
of  the  world,  with  scholars  and  gentlemen  in  every  walk  of 
life,  where  all  the  living  questions  about  society,  religion, 
and  science,  about  history  and  art  in  all  its  branches,  come 
up  for  discussion, — must  not  feel  that  he  is,  in  all  these 
matters,  treading  upon  unknown  or  uncertain  ground.  He 
must  have  already  studied  and  discussed  and  mastered  all 
these  mighty  problems.  He  must  stand,  in  every  company 
where  the  serious-minded  and  the  cultivated  meet,  like  one 
who  is  naturally  looked  up  to  for  light,  not  as  one  who  is  com¬ 
pelled  to  be  dumb  through  sheer  ignorance,  and  therefore 
looked  down  upon.  He  will  everywhere  meet  with  consci¬ 
entious  and  anxious  inquirers  after  truth, — after  the  truth 
on  these  momentous  issues  between  science  and  religion, — 
and  must  he  perforce  be  silent  \  Has  he  no  light  in  his  lamp 
wherewith  to  guide  the  soul  who  is  seeking  the  right  road 
amid  the  surrounding  darkness  % 

We  need  to  have  our  clergymen  leading  the  advance  of 
intellect  on  every  path  of  solid  science.  We  need  to  have 
our  young  professional  men  in  the  world,  after  they  come 
forth  from  our  colleges,  armed  cap-a-pie  with  such  armor 
that  no  assault  shall  pierce  it,  and  with  such  victorious  wea¬ 
pons,  that  no  enemy  shall  stand  before  them. 


278 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


The  Classics  are  only  Models  of  Literary  Excellence. 

The  knowledge  of  Greek  and  Latin  is  only  a  small  portion 
of  the  varied  culture  that  fills  a  college  course  ;  the  study  of 
the  classical  authors  in  these  languages, — is  for  the  intellect 
and  the  taste,  a  training  and  a  molding  similar  to  that, 
which  the  selected  art -students  from  every  country  in 
Christendom  have  to  undergo  in  Rome,  while  contemplat¬ 
ing,  studying,  copying,  and  imitating  the  immortal  works 
of  pagan  and  Christian  art  collected  there.  Just  as  the 
painter  or  the  architect  in  examining  and  analyzing  the 
masterpieces  left  behind  by  the  artists  of  Italy  and  Greece, 
finds  daily  new  worlds  of  ideal  perfection  and  beauty 
opened  before  him, — ideal  forms  and  conceptions  which 
he  can  make  his  own  by  study  and  imitation, — even  so  is  it 
with  the  glorious  forms  of  literary  perfection  bequeathed 
to  us  by  antiquity.  We  can  make  them  our  own,  copy 
them,  endeavor  to  surpass  them. 

It  is  universally  conceded,  that  to  be  a  superior  painter  or 
sculptor,  long  years  of  study  in  Rome  are  an  indispensable 
discipline.  It  ought  to  be, — indeed  it  is  just  as  generally 
granted, — that  to  attain  the  first  rank  in  literary  excellence, 
the  study  of  classical  literature  is  a  discipline  none  the  less 
necessary. 

Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning  was  almost  as  enthusiastic  a 
student  of  Greek  antiquity,  as  William  Ewart  Gladstone,  or 
Guizot,  or  Wiseman.  The  writers,  poets,  orators,  who  might 
be  mentioned  as  forming  exceptions  to  this  rule,  are,  in 
reality,  no  exceptions.  The  contemporary  models  on  whom 
they  formed  their  method  and  their  diction,  were,  every  one 
of  them,  the  living  copies  of  ancient  excellence. 

In  one  word,  if  you  send  your  son  to  college,  only  keep 

him  there  when  you  find  that  he  has  both  the  talent  and 

.  * 

the  love  of  study  that  will  insure  success.  Then  spare  no 
encouragement  to  your  boy,  no  help  to  his  masters  that  can 
further  and  increase  this  success.  Wait  patiently  for  the 
end,  and  you  will  be  surely  rewarded. 


THE  CHURCH ,  THE  PARENT  OF  HIGH  EDUCATION  279 


If,  on  the  contrary,  yon  find,  after  necessary  trial,  that 
your  boy  has  neither  aptitude  nor  inclination  for  such 
studies, — you  will  do  a  prudent  parent’s  part  in  withdraw¬ 
ing  him  and  putting  him  elsewhere  to  studies  proportioned 
to  his  talent  and  his  bent,  and  under  such  discipline'  as  may 
secure  both  his  learning  well  what  he  is  put  to,  and  his  cul¬ 
tivating  his  own  heart  by  self-discipline. 


CHAPTEE  XIV. 


THE  SECOND  EDUCATION. 

Man  am  I  grown,  a  man’s  work  must  I  do. 

Tennyson. 

We  are  not  liere  to  promote  incalculable  quantities  of  law,  physic,  or  manu¬ 
factured  goods,  but  to  become  men  :  not  narrow  pedants,  but  wide-seeing, 
mind-traveled  men.  Who  are  the  men  of  history  to  be  admired  most  ?  Those 
whom  most  things  became  :  who  could  be  weighty  in  debate,  of  much  device  in 
council,  considerate  in  a  sick-room,  genial  at  a  feast,  joyous  at  a  festival,  capa¬ 
ble  of  discourse  with  many  minds,  large-souled,  not  to  be  shriveled  up  into 
any  one  form,  fashion,  or  temperament. — Helps.* 


The  public  school,  the  college,  and  the  university  only 
prepare  youth  for  the  great  school  of  the  world.  Academic 
training  of  every  kind  fit  young  men  to  educate  themselves 
for  the  serious  business  of  life.  This  second  and  decisive 
education  should  b3  kept  in  mind  both  by  parents  and  by 
teachers,  while  a  boy  is  undergoing  in  school  the  intellec¬ 
tual  and  moral  discipline  that  is  to  form  his  character  and 
to  exercise  on  his  future  career  so  great  an  influence. 

He  must  be  told,  while  still  amid  the  quiet  shades  of  his 
Alma  Mater,  that  he  will  have  hard  and  noble  work  to  do, 
and  a  long  battle  to  fight.  His  educators  only  train  him  to 
familiarity  with  his  workman’s  tools,  and  accustom  him  to 
bear  and  use  his  armor  and  weapons.  On  entering  on  his 
chosen  professional  sphere,  he  must  prove  that  he  is  an 

“  Active  doer,  noble  liver, 

Strong  to  labor,  sure  to  conquer.” 

We  are  anxious — in  the  first  place — that  the  youth  who 


*  “Friends  in  Council,”  i.,  p.  64 ;  New  York,  1861. 

280 


THE  “NOBLE  LIVER.” 


281 


turns  his  back  on  school  and  his  face  toward  the  serious 
and  stern  work  before  him,  should  show  himself  “a  noble 
liver,”  by  the  principles  and  virtues  displayed  in  private 
life,  while  proving  himself,  besides,  in  his  professional 
dealings,  the  “  active  doer,  strong  to  labor,  sure  to  con¬ 
quer.” 

The  “nobility  of  life,”  that  all  have  a  right  to  expect 
from  the  long  and  carefully  trained  student,  must  manifest 
itself  in  his  duteous  conduct  toward  his  own  family.  Young 
people  returning  home  at  the  end  of  their  academical  edu¬ 
cation,  are,  all  too  frequently,  apt  to  fancy,  that  their 
“good  behavior”  and  their  “accomplishments”  are  things 
to  be  put  by  with  their  class-books  and  their  diplomas,  and 
only  to  be  brought  forth  from  the  closet  for  the  admiration 
and  delight  of  strangers. 

Be  the  Delight  of  your  Home-Circle. 

Have  we  not  known  young  ladies,  who  charmed  the  large 
audience  assembled  on  the  “graduating  day”  with  their 
musical  and  oratorical  performances,  and  who  could  not  be 
induced  to  play,  or  sing,  or  recite  one  poetical  passage  in 
order  to  gratify  their  home-circle,  precisely  because  it  was 
but  the  home-circle  %  What  perversity  of  temper,  taste,  and 
judgment !  Ah,  young  ladies,  we  were  taught  in  our  young 
days — long  ago — that  every  accomplishment  brought  from 
school  by  the  sons  and  daughters  of  any  good  family,  were 
to  be  chiefly  and  before  all  else,  displayed  for  the  pleasure 
of  father  and  mother  and  brothers  and  sisters.  It  was  then 
the  rule  and  the  fashion  to  delight  the  family  circle  each 
evening  with  music  and  song  and  charade,  brothers  and  sis¬ 
ters  all  joining  hand  and  heart  and  voice  rapturously,  pre¬ 
cisely  because  father  and  mother  were  delighted  lookers- 
on,  and  all  the  more  rapturously  because  they  alone  were 
there  to  drink  their  fill  of  the  deep  delight.  Has  this  rule 
become  “old  fashioned”  ? 

But  our  words  are  more  for  your  brothers  than  for  you. 
Young  men, — we  happen  to  know  it, — often  toil  heroically 


282 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


to  deserve  their  degree  of  bachelor  or  of  master  of  arts.  It 
is  most  praiseworthy  toil,  assuredly  ;  and  it  should  ever  be 
an  earnest  to  all  who  witness  it  of  the  still  nobler  qualities 
that  are  to  mark  the  after-college  life. 

Do  not  forget,  however,  young  laureates,  that  there  are 
other  arts,  often  harder  to  master,  and  not  less  necessary  to 
you,  which  you  are  to  study,  to  court,  to  possess,  and  to 
practice,  if  you  would  be  the  true  men  the  world  expects 
you  to  be.  There  is  a  science,  more  needful  even  than 
those  which  enable  one  to  read  all  the  mysteries  of  earth 
and  ocean  and  the  starry  heavens, — the  science  of  living 
with  others  so  as  to  contribute  our  utmost  to  their  happi¬ 
ness. 

Claim  of  Parents  on  their  Educated  Sons . 

Before  and  above  all  others  your  parents  have  the  first 
claim  on  you, — now  that  you  are  once  more  the  inmates  of 
their  home.  Shall  we  consider  together  one  or  two  points 
which  are  of  most  especial  importance  to  you  and  to  them 
at  this  critical  period  of  life  ? 

Though  you  may  be  the  most  generous  and  devoted  of 
sons,  and  most  desirous  of  shoAving  your  parents  how 
deeply  you  prize  the  self-sacrificing  love  that  has  been  so 
long  waiting  for  your  return  to  the  home,  yet  we  venture  to 
affirm  that  you  are  far  from  estimating  that  love  at  its  real 
value.  Even  where  parents  are  so  blessed  with  the  goods 
of  fortune,  that  the  cost  of  the  longest  and  most  expensive 
education  is  to  them  a  matter  of  no  account,  there  are  other 
sacrifices  which  a  noble-hearfced  youth  will  consider  to  be 
infinitely  greater.  There  is  the  generosity  of  a  mother’s 
love,  consenting  to  the  long  years  of  separation  from  her 
dear  ones, — perhaps  her  only  one.  This  unsatisfied  craving 
of  a  motherly  heart  is  not  one  that  dies  out  with  time  :  it 
rather  increases  with  each  succeeding  year.  For  the  love 
and  pride  of  a  true  mother’s  heart  look  forward  to  the 
beautiful  bloom  of  early  manhood  in  her  boy,  Avitli  a  yearn¬ 
ing  to  Avhich  nothing  can  be  compared  in  depth  and  in¬ 
tensity. 


THE  CHARMS  OF  A  MOTHER'S  HEARTH. 


283 


The  father’ s  patient  waiting  is  often  scarcely  less  deserv¬ 
ing  of  filial  gratitude  and  admiration.  For,  after  all,  it  is 
to  his  sons  that  a  father  looks  forward  not  only  for  the  dear 
companionship  which  is  a  need  of  fatherly  natures,  but  for 
the  realization  of  the  hope  deposited  in  every  father’s  heart 
by  t  God’s  own  hand, — of  seeing  himself  living  again  and 
prospering  in  his  sons.  And  how  often  does  it  not  happen 
that  a  father’s  hopes  and  affections  center  in  the  son  whose 
education  and  progress  he  watches  with  ever-increasing 
anxiety  ? 

The  Debt  of  Gratitude  due  to  Poor  Parents. 

When  the  parents  who  thus  “  watch  and  wait”  for  the 
long-expected  return  of  the  absent  one,  are  anything  but 
favorites  of  fortune  ;  when  they  have  both  toiled  and  suf¬ 
fered  through  the  tedious  college  years,  denying  themselves 
everything,  that  the  absent  one  should  want  for  nothing  ; 
when  they  had  set  their  hearts  on  seeing  him  combine  in 
his  own  person,  at  the  end  of  his  studies,  all  literary  accom¬ 
plishment  and  moral  excellence, — with  what  an  unspeaka¬ 
ble  intensity  of  expectant  love,  do  not  these  two  fond,  hun¬ 
gry  hearts  stretch  forth  to  meet  him  on  his  coming  home  ! 
Who  can  describe  the  mother’s  joy  and  triumph,  when  the 
boy  she  has  parted  with  long  ago  returns  a  man,  or  almost 
a  man, — every  accomplishment  and  youthful  grace  exagge¬ 
rated  in  the  light  of  her  motherly  admiration  ? 

Who  can  say,  on  the  other  hand,  how  much  a  son  thus 
returning  to  the  home  of  his  childhood,  has  it  in  his  power 
to  do  for  the  contentment,  the  perfect  happiness  of  his 
parents?  Sweet  above  all  the  rewards  that  mind  could 
plan,  or  wealth  purchase,  sweet  above  all  thought  and  be¬ 
yond  our  power  of  expression,  is  the  grateful  devotion  of 
such  a  son  to  such  parents.  .  .  . 

A  son  blessed  with  such  parents  as  are  here  described, 
must  have  brought  away  from  their  home — how  lowly  so¬ 
ever  we  may  picture  it — the  undying  memories  of  a  love 
incomparable  in  sweetness  and  blissfulness.  Whatever  may 


284 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


have  been  his  experiences  at  college,  as  boyhood  slowly 
grew  into  youth  and  early  manhood, — it  is  not  likely  that 
the  spectacle  of  others’  wealth  and  home  luxuries,  could 
have  blotted  away  from  his  true  heart  the  image  of  his 
father’s  hearthstone  and  of  her  who  kept  ever  burning 
upon  it  the  bright  fire  of  her  own  womanly  charities. 

“My  own  fireside  !  Those  simple  words 
Can  bid  the  sweetest  dreams  arise  ; 

Awaken  feelings’  tenderest  chords, 

And  fill  with  tears  of  joy  mine  eyes. 

What  is  there  my  wild  heart  can  prize. 

That  doth  not  in  thy  sphere  abide  ; 

Haunt  of  my  home-bred  sympathies. 

My  own — my  own  fireside  !  ” 

Yes — we  have  seen  not  only  the  young  man,  with  all  his 
blushing  honors  thick  upon  him,  find  no  repose,  enjoy  no 
satisfaction,  and  apparently  close  his  ears  to  the  concert  cf 
admiration  and  praise  that  greeted  him  inside  and  outside 
the  academic  halls,  — till  he  was  fast  clasped  in  his  mother’ s 
arms,  and  heard  one  word  of  simple  congratulation  from 
her  or  from  his  father’s  lips.  The  added  brightness  and 
warmth  which  his  presence  seemed  to  bring  to  the  dear 
hearth  of  his  childhood,  was  more  grateful  to  his  inward 
and  outward  sense  than  the  rapturous  applause  of  multi¬ 
tudes.  And,  oh,  how  we  have  seen  a  happy  mother’s  face 
transformed  by  the  sight  of  her  returning  boy,  as  if  the 
light  of  another  world  shone  upon  it,  and  her  whole  soul 
beaming  forth  in  the  look  of  unutterable  gratitude  with 
which  she  heard  her  darling’s  words  and  received  his 
caresses ! 

Loving  to  come  bach  to  the  Old  Nest. 

We  have  seen  sons,  later  in  life,  when  they  had  homes  of 
their  own, — homes,  too,  blessed  with  all  a  man’s  heart  can 
desire,  — yet  loving  to  fly  back  to  the  old  nest  where  their  in¬ 
fancy  had  been  sheltered,  and  coveting  the  sweet  warmth 
of  their  mother’s  wing,  as  eagerly  as  if  the  whole  outside 
world  had  not  one  other  restful  spot  for  them  !  Ah,  true 


THE  CHARMS  OF  A  MOTHER’S  HEARTH. 


285 


men  !  to  them  shall  be  given,  in  their  turn,  sons  and  daugh¬ 
ters  who  will  love  to  make  their  father’s  home  a  paradise, 
and  to  crown  his  old  age  with  the  priceless  love  that  he 
had  lavished  on  his  parents. 

Do  not  be  ashamed  of  being  ever  a  little  child  when  you 
seek  the  dear  and  holy  atmosphere  of  a  father’ s  home  and 
a  mother’ s  tenderness.  It  must  be  your  praise  in  the  eyes 
of  all  true  men,  ever  to  feel  and  to  say  of  the  roof  beneath 
which  you  were  reared — 

“My  refuge  ever  from  the  storm 

Of  this  world’s  passion,  strife,  and  care  ; 

Though  thunder-clouds  the  skies  deform. 

Their  fury  cannot  reach  me  there  : 

There  all  is  cheerful,  calm,  and  fair  ; 

Wrath,  envy,  malice,  strife,  or  pride, 

Hath  never  made  its  hated  lair, 

By  thee — my  own  fireside  ! 

“  Shrine  of  my  household  deities  ; 

Bright  scene  of  home’s  unsullied  joys  ; 

To  thee  my  burthened  spirit  flies, 

When  Fortune  frowns,  or  Care  annoys  ! 

Thine  is  the  bliss  that  never  cloys  ; 

The  smile  whose  truth  hath  oft  been  tried  ; — 

What,  then,  are  this  world’s  tinsel  toys, 

To  thee — my  own  fireside  ! 

“  Oh,  may  the  yearnings,  fond  and  sweet. 

That  bid  my  thoughts  be  all  of  thee, 

Thus  ever  guide  my  wandering  feet 
To  thy  heart-soothing  sanctuary  ! 

Whate’er  my  future  years  may  be. 

Let  joy  or  grief  my  fate  betide, 

Be  still  an  Eden  bright  to  me, 

My  own — my  own  fireside  !  ”  * 

You  will  say, — and  most  justly, — that  a  soul  incapable  of 
prizing  the  purest  and  dearest  of  all  this  world’s  joys, — a 
mother’s  proud  affection  and  a  father’s  manly  love, — must 
be  a  soul  afflicted  with  some  moral  deformity.  Yet  is  it 
most  true  that  there  are  many  such. 


*Alaric  A.  Watts. 


236 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


If,  in  onr  long  acquaintance  with  parents  and  tlieir  sons, 
we  have  been  gladdened  by  seeing  the  former  made  happy 
by  their  children,  by  witnessing  the  fondest,  proudest  reali¬ 
zation  of  a  father  and  a  mother’s  dreams, — we  have  also 
known  of  more  than  one  instance  of  bitter  deception.  Of 
the  latter  we  only  permit  ourselves  to  speak  here,  in  the 
hope  that  this  page  may  attract  the  eye  of  advanced  stu¬ 
dents,  and  warn  them  in  time  to  prevent  their  incurring  the 
guilt  of  the  blackest  human  ingratitude  and  one  of  the  most 
dreadful  of  possible  misfortunes. 

There  have  been  sons,  tenderly  loved  and  cared  for,  edu¬ 
cated  at  the  cost  of  sacrifices  knowm  in  their  full  extent  to 
God  alone,  on  whose  future  goodness  and  greatness  both 
parents  had  built  the  dearest  hope  of  their  life,  —  and 
who,  at  the  end  of  their  college  or  university  course,  were 
ashamed  to  return  to  their  paternal  roof,  as  if  to  acknowl¬ 
edge  poor  father  and  mother  were  to  them  a  degradation  ! 
Ah,  thrice  unhappy  parents  who  had  conceived  and  nursed 
so  long  the  fond,  foolish,  fatal  ambition  of  devoting  their 
substance  and  their  lives  to  “  making  their  son  a  gentle- 
map  ” !  As  if  anything  but  the  gentle  heart  and  the  gener¬ 
ous  spirit  could  make  the  gentleman  ! 

We  glance  rapidly  at  such  moral  monsters,  both  because 
we  would  be  most  unwilling  to  have  our  readers  believe  that 
they  are  anything  else  than  rare  monsters  of  ingratitude 
and  baseness,  and  because  we  must  hasten  to  say  how  com¬ 
mon  are  the  opposite  examples  of  manly  affection,  and  true 
nobleness  of  spirit. 

To  those  who  know  the  numbers  of  high-souled  men 
sprung  from  the  laborer’s  cabin,  reared  and  educated  at  the 
expense  of  a  whole  life’s  toil  and  privation,  and  filling  the 
most  honorable  stations  in  every  rank  of  the  community, — 
we  need  not  say  that  such  perversity  as  we  here  hold  up  as 
a  warning,  can  only  be  exceptional.  Were  the  writing  of 
this  book  to  have  no  other  effect  than  to  spare,  by  preven¬ 
tion,  a  single  motherly  or  fatherly  heart  such  agony  as 
we  have  beheld, — we  should  have  good  cause  not  to  regret 
our  labor. 


FROM  PIETY  FLOW  THE  SOCIAL  CHARITIES. 


287 


Home-  Treasures  of  Affection . 

And  so  this  much  to  remind  young  men,  that  their  first 
duty,  on  their  return  home,  is  to  their  parents  and  their 
family.  Within  their  home  they  should  exert  themselves 
not  only  to  repay  father  and  mother  with  unceasing  love 
and  reverence  and  devotion,  but  they  should  find  especial 
delight  in  making  up  to  their  brothers  and  sisters  for  the 
manifold  regrets  of  the  long  absence  from  home. 

Friendships  formed  in  college,  we  know  it  well,  are  often 
the  purest  and  the  most  lasting  ;  still  a  friend’ s  constant  af¬ 
fection  and  support  is  rarely  comparable  to  the  treasure  of 
a  brother  or  a  sister’s  love.  Those  only  whose  souls  are 
guided  in  all  things  by  principle  and  conscience,  can  appre¬ 
ciate  what  a  noble  brother’s  friendship  is,  or  what  is  the 
treasure  of  a  sister’ s  undying  fidelity. 

Cultivate  these  home  charities,  these  family  affections, 
first  of  all  and  before  everything  else.  And  then  persuade 
yourself  that  the  first,  and  most  frequently  the  best,  school 
for  studying  the  social  virtues  and  social  refinement, — is  in 
the  bosom  of  your  own  household. 

As  we  are  laying  down  a  few  practical  rules  to  help  young 
men  in  acquiring,  together  with  the  true  graces  of  social 
manners,  the  true  esteem  of  all  who  know  them,  let  us  begin 
by  saying,  that  the  solid  foundation  of  all  interior  sweet¬ 
ness,  outward  gracefulness,  and  all  real  lovableness, — is 
God’s  grace  in  the  soul’s  center,  and  the  serenity  which  its 
presence  produces. 

You  need  a  higher  motive  than  ever  not  only  for  preserv¬ 
ing  undiminished  the  manly  and  unaffected  piety  of  which 
you  acquired  the  habit  at  school,  but  of  increasing  its  vig¬ 
orous  growth  in  the  sunlight  of  public  life.  You  must  not 
look  for  approval  to  those  above,  around,  or  beneath  you  : 
look  to  God  alone !  Though  but  a  layman  and  a  young 
man, — you  are  now  “  God’s  man,”  bound  to  represent  Him 
in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  bound  to  be  His  son  in  Godlike 
action,  and  destined  to  gain  for  Him  many  victories  in  the 


288 


TRUE  MEET  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


battle  of  Truth  against  Error,  of  goodness  against  triumph¬ 
ant  depravity.  You  are  God’s  soldier  and  servant.  Look 
to  Him  alone  for  strength,  approval,  and  reward  ! 

You  are  God’s  organ,  in  more  ways  than  one;  you  are 
appointed  by  Him  as  a  teacher  to  those  “  who  sit  in  dark¬ 
ness,”  who  know  your  ancestral  faith  only  through  the 
misrepresentations  they  have  heard  of  it,  who,  perhaps, 
know  your  God  Himself  only  through  the  distorting  haze 
of  a  bad  education  and  a  false  philosophy. 

Mission  of  Educated  Young  Men. 

You  are  to  teach  them.  This  is  so  true,  that  hencefor¬ 
ward,  wherever  you  go  and  are  known  as  a  child  of  the 
Great  Mother,  brought  up  in  one  of  her  privileged  schools, 
your  life  will  be  taken  as  a  sample  of  her  godliness,  your 
words  will  be  repeated  as  the  echo  of  her  doctrines,  and 
your  person,  your  manners,  your  very  bearing  in  public 
and  in  private,  will  be  pointed  out  as  the  result  of  Catholic 
culture. 

Yes, — you  are  so  truly  a  teacher,  that  your  whole  life 
will  be  watched,  scrutinized,  recorded,  and  commented  on, 
— as  a  living  lesson  of  Catholic  enlightenment  and  morality. 
In  the  schools  which  sprung  up  in  the  Spain  of  the  sixteenth 
century  as  well  as  in  newly  discovered  America,  the  young 
teachers — the  saintly  sons  of  the  great  St.  Teresa — were 
wont  each  morning  to  say,  before  beginning  their  lessons, 
the  following  most  beautiful  prayer.  Do  not  fear  to  read 
it,  to  make  it  your  own.  A  lovely  flower  is  none  the  less 
lovely  or  fragrant  because  it  happens  to  bloom  in  a  cathe¬ 
dral  close,  and  beneath  the  shadow  of  God’s  holy  house. 
So  fear  not  to  cull  it  and  wear  it  near  your  heart.  Here 
it  is  : 

uO  most  lowly-minded  King  of  hearts  Christ  Jesus,  by 
the  very  heart  of  that  merciful  condescension  which  led 
Thee,  our  Orient  from  on  high,  to  visit  us  in  our  need,  I 
beseech  Thee  to  create  within  me  through  the  Spirit  who 
is  Thy  Gift,  an  humble  and  pure  heart,  all  athirst  for  Thine 


PIETY  KEEPS  TEE  SOUL  EVER  YOUNG. 


289 


own  secret  teaching :  in  order  that  in  this  school  of  Thy 
lowly  followers,  I  may  learn  to  guide,  without  leading 
astray,  the  tender  souls  committed  to  me  by  Thy  sweet 
Mother.”  * 

Wear  near  your  heart,  in  an  especial  manner,  the  desire 
to  be  Christ-like  in  your  soul,  and  Christ-like  in  your  life, 
and  the  resolve  to  win  to  Him  by  the  sweet  fragrance  of 
your  gentleness,  your  refinement,  your  modesty,  your  un¬ 
blemished  purity  and  honor, — the  souls  who  know  neither 
Him  nor  your  Great  Mother  ! 

You  need  only  be  true  to  the  divine  light  and  voice 
within,  in  order  to  appear  before  others,  in  all  the  relations 
of  life,  as  God  and  men  would  have  you.  The  conscious 
possession  of  His  grace,  who  is  the  deep  ocean  of  peafce, 
sweetness,  and  love,  will  enable  you,  force  you  even,  to 
look  with  contentment  and  love  on  all  persons  and  things 
throughout  His  creation. 

The  spirit  of  true  piety  is  not  the  sad,  melancholy,  brood¬ 
ing,  and  bitter  thing  that  a  gloomy  fanaticism  would  make 
it.  It  is  lightsome,  joyous,  loving,  compassionate,  and  all- 
embracing  in  its  kindness.  The  Spirit  of  God  in  a  youthful 
soul,  just  beginning  to  run  its  race  of  usefulness  in  the 
world,  sheds  abroad  over  earth  and  sky  and  ocean,  over 
the  whole  moral  as  well  as  the  material  world,  the  light  of 
deep  and  joyous  contentment  with  w  hich  their  Divine  Author 
uttered,  in  the  beginning,  the  judgment,  that  “  they  were 
very  good.” 

It  is  sad  enough  to  see  old  men,  who  have  tasted  of  life’s 
bitterness  and  disappointments,  without  being  chastened 
by  them  or  impelled  to  draw  nearer  to  God, — who  have 
sate  at  the  banquet  of  life  without  appreciating  or  enjoying 
a  single  one  of  the  delights  spread  out  for  them  there  by 
the  most  bountiful  hand  of  our  God, — to  go  darkly  and 


*  Humillime  Rex  cordium  Jesu  Cliriste,  per  viscera  misericordise  tuae,  in 
quibus  visitasti  nos  oriens  ex  alto,  obsecro  te,  creare  digneris  in  me  cor  humile 
et  purum,  cupidissimum  secretae  eruditionis  tuae  :  ut  in  scliola  liumilium  disci- 
pulorum  tuorum  fiam  dono  tuo  sapiens  ad  regendam  sine  deccptione  novellam 
prolem  dulcissimae  Genetricis  tuae. 

19 


290 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


gloomily  down  to  tlieir  grave  abusing  and  cursing  their 
fellow-men,  and  asserting  that  all  is  bad  in  this  beautiful 
world  of  ours.  They  pass  through  life,  like  beasts  of  ill 
odor  by  night  through  the  loveliest  of  gardens,  without 
perceiving  or  having  the  capacity  to  perceive  the  varied 
wealth  and  beauty  and  magnificence  of  nature  and  art 
around  them. 

To  the  Pure  of  Heart  the  World  is  ever  Beautiful. 

Not  so  do  the  eyes  of  pure-hearted,  noble-minded  youth 
look  out  upon  God’ s  universe.  They  behold  it  overspread 
with  the  heavenly  tints  that  clothed  it  at  its  prime,  when 
God  walked  forth  in  visible  form  to  enjoy  the  works  of 
His  own  hands,  “  When  the  morning  stars  praised  [Him] 
together,  and  all  the  sons  of  God  made  a  joyful  melody.”  * 
The  divinely  enlightened  heart  of  the  young  and  the  pure 
is  drawn  instinctively  toward  what  is  good  and  lovely,  not 
only  in  the  society  of  men,  but  throughout  every  other 
walk  of  creation.  And  this  lightsomeness  and  freshness  of 
heart  dies  not  away  with  youth,  but  lasts,  in  the  true  man, 
increased  and  intensified,  through  manhood  and  old  age. 
The  springtide  of  the  pure  heart  is  eternal.  The  lamp  of 
God  which  illuminates  the  soul- sanctuary  never  ceases  to 
shed  its  golden  splendors  on  the  outside  world.  Its  light 
only  grows  more  vivid  as  the  day  of  eternity  draws  near. 

Oh,  may  that  freshness  of  heart,  that  unfading  youth  of 
soul  be  ever  yours,  through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  age, 
health,  fortune,  enjoyment,  and  suffering ! 

Let  this  interior  peace,  this  deep  contentment,  this  dispo¬ 
sition  to  see  in  man  and  in  nature  the  bright  side  only,  save 
you,  within  your  family  circle,  from  the  fatal  faults  of  cen¬ 
soriousness  and  fault-finding.  Have  always  words  of  praise 
for  your  dear  ones. 

“  Be  to  (their)  virtues  very  kind  ; 

Be  to  (their)  faults  a  little  blind.”  f 


*  Job,  xxxviii.  7. 


f  Matthew  Prior. 


PURITY  BREEDS  CONTENTMENT  AND  CHARITY.  291 


Carry  with  you  the  same  rule  into  the  outside  world.  Be 
prompt  to  see  the  good  qualities  of  those  with  whom  you 
have  to  associate ;  be  slow  to  acknowledge  their  faults  even 
to  yourself ;  and  be  careful  not  to  show  one  man  in  ten 
thousand  that  you  have  discovered  in  others  or  in  himself 
anything  you  deem  blameworthy. 

Be,  on  the  contrary,  both  prompt  and  generous  in  prais¬ 
ing  the  good  you  see  in  others.  Do  not  believe  that  all  men 
are  prone  to  evil  and  ever  ready  to  do  you  a  mischief.  The 
longer  you  live,  the  greater  and  wider  your  experience  of 
mankind,  and  the  more  will  you  have  reason  to  bless  God 
that  there  are  so  many  noble  and  beautiful  souls  left  on 
earth  to  prove  the  presence  on  it  of  good  angels  and  of  the 
God  of  angels. 


Purity  is  always  full  of  Reverence. 

Never, — so  long  as  He  spares  your  mother’s  life, — fail  to 
show  her  daily  and  hourly  a  love  full  of  infinite  reverence 
and  tenderness.  Let  your  love  for  your  sisters  be  also  most 
respectful  and  deferential.  And  should  God  send  you,  in 
His  own  good  time,  a  woman  who  can  be  all  in  all  to  you, 
let  your  love  for  her  be  distinguished  by  the  same  reveren¬ 
tial  feeling,  and  your  life-long  service  to  her  be  one  of  re¬ 
spectful  and  heartfelt  devotion. 

Reverence  is  to  love,  what  a  casing  of  purest  gold  and 
crystal,  adorned  with  precious  stones,  is  to  the  portrait  of 
the  one  dearest  to  our  heart :  it  preserves  the  loved  image 
from  soil  and  decay,  while  permitting  us  to  gaze  on  the 
cherished  features,  and  to  wear  it  continually  near  our  heart. 

Think  and  speak  of  all  women  with  something,  at  least,  of 
the  respect  and  the  deference  you  are  wont  to  show  to  your 
mother  and  your  sisters  ;  and  never  jjermit  yourself  any¬ 
thing  approaching  to  disrespect  toward  the  poorest,  the  low¬ 
liest,  the  most  unworthy  of  their  sex.  If  you  would  have 
a  sure,  an  infallible  sign  marking  out  to  you,  in  the  inter¬ 
course  of  life,  the  man  who  should  never  be  your  friend, 
your  companion,  or  your  business  associate,  let  it  be  disre- 


292 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


spect  to  women.  Tlie  man  who  forgets  what  is  due  to  his 
mother’s  sex  is  neither  a  true  gentleman,  nor  a  true  man : 
and  he  who  habitually  thinks  and  speaks  evil  of  women,  is 
one  who  has  long  ago  forfeited  self-respect  and  is  unworthy 
of  the  esteem  of  virtuous  men.  He  is  a  moral  leper  to  be 
shunned  carefully  and  mercilessly. 

Truth  and  Honor. 

Be  truthful, — truthful  in  thought,  in  intention,  in  word, 
and  deed, — in  the  whole  tenor  of  your  life,  as  if  He  who 
made  your  soul  were  visibly  present  to  you  in  your  studies, 
your  conversations,  your  every  daily  act,  standing — revealed 
to  your  eyes — by  the  side  of  every  person  you  spoke  to, 
and  dealt  with. 

Be  honorable. 

“  Inform 

Thy  thoughts  with  nobleness,  that  thou  mayst  prove 
To  shame  invulnerable,  and  stick  i’  the  wars 
Like  a  great  sea-mark  standing  every  flaw. 

And  saving  those  that  eye  thee.” 

-  « 

He  who  has  ever  passed  in  Eastern  lands  for  the  wisest,  if 
not  the  greatest,  of  men,  said  long,  long  ago  :  u  A  good  name 
is  better  than  great  riches.”  *  We  must,  however,  hasten 
to  warn  you  not  to  mistake  false  honor  for  the  true,  the 
shadow  for  the  substance,  the  vain  praise  of  men  for  the 
just  judgment  of  God  on  the  solid  merits  of  His  children  ; 
the  road  of  pi;ide  and  self-worship,  leading  aloft  and  ending 
at  an  inevitable  precipice,  for  the  safe  path  in  which  the 
“  noble  liver”  walks,  while  he  seeks  and  sings  praise  to  the 
Most  High  God. 

The  son,  well-born  and  high-souled,  has  only  one  aim  in 
doing,  daring,  and  bearing  great  things, — to  glorify  his 
father,  to  reflect  honor  on  the  mother  who  bore  him.  The 
crown  he  wins  he  only  values  because  he  can  lay  it  at  their 
feet,  the  songs  sung  in  his  praise  are  only  sweet  to  his  ears 
in  so  far  as  their  music  can  reach  and  thrill  the  souls  of  his 
parents. 


*  Proverbs  of  Solomon,  xxii.  1. 


A  CHRISTIAN'S  TENDER  CARE  OF  HIS  HONOR.  293 

0 

This  most  true  and  lofty  sentiment  dictates  also  the  care 
to  be  had  of  one’s  name  and  reputation.  For  the  name  one 
bears  is  the  father’s  name,  the  family  name  ;  and  its  honor 
belongs  not  to  one’s  self  exclusively,  but  rather  to  one’s 
parents  and  kindred. 

We  know, — you,  flower  of  our  Christian  youth,  know  it 
far  better  than  the  multitude, — that  our  dearest  honor  is 
that  of  the  God  who  created  and  redeemed  us,  that  of  the 
Church,  who,  under  Him,  is  the  dear  Mother  of  our  souls. 
F or  them  we  stand  or  we  fall ;  on  them  is  reflected  alike  our 
honor  or  our  dishonor. 

“  The  Pious  and  Just  Honoring  of  Ourselves .” 

44  The  Catholic  Church  nourishes  that  4  ingenious  and 
noble  shame,’  which  Milton  so  extols,  adding,  4  or  call  it,  if 
you  will,  that  esteem,  whereby  men  bear  an  inward  reve¬ 
rence  toward  their  own  persons.’  And  if,  as  he  continues, 

4  the  love  of  God,  as  a  fire  sent  from  heaven  ever  to  be  kept 
alive  upon  the  altars  of  our  hearts,  be  the  first  principle  of 
all  godly  and  virtuous  actions  in  men,  and  this  pious  and 
just  honoring  of  ourselves  the  second,  serving  as  the  radical 
moisture  and  fountain-head,  whence  every  laudable  and 
worthy  enterprise  issues  forth,’ — where,  except  in  the  Cath¬ 
olic  Church,  can  we  find  any  security  ,for  its  perpetual 
transmission  ?  Where  else  can  honor  hope  to  find  an  inex¬ 
haustible  source  of  that  self-respect  which  makes  man  fear 
not  so  much  the  offense  and  reproach  of  others,  as  he  dreads 
and  would  blush  at  the  reflection  of  his  own  severe  and 
modest  eye  upon  himself,  if  it  should  see  him  doing  or 
imagining,  though  in  the  deepest  secrecy,  that  which  is 
base.’  ”  * 

There  lies  the  distinction  between  false  honor, — the  wor¬ 
ship  of  self,  accepted  from  the  world  for  the  sole  sake  of 
self,  by  the  proud  or  vain  man, — and  true  honor,  the  self- 
respect,  the  pious  and  just  honoring  of  ourselves,  for  His 


*  Digby,  “  Compitum,”  b.  i.,  ch.  ix. 


294 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


sake  and  His  love,  who  is  onr  Father  in  Heaven,  and  next 
for  her  sake,  who  is  the  Mother  of  His  children  here  below. 

We  have  a  striking  and  memorable  illustration  of  this  in 
the  conduct  of  St.  Ignatius  of  Loyola.  The  once  chival¬ 
rous  and  sensitive  soldier,  who  shrank  from  the  thought  of 
worldly  dishonor  as  from  something  a  thousand  times  worse 
than  death  in  its  most  appalling  form,  became,  after  his 
conversion,  filled  with  an  insatiable  thirst  for  humiliations. 
So  long  as  these  only  fell  upon  himself  without  involving 
his  good  name  as  connected  with  others,  or  with  the  honor 
of  Clod  and  His  Church,  he  would  drink  in  and  savor  insult 
and  scorn  with  more  avidity,  than  the  fainting  traveler  from 
across  the  burning  wilderness,  would  drink  of  the  first  cool 
spring  on  his  path.  Thus,  while  pursuing  under  the  guidance 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  his  first  long  course  of  moral  discipline  in 
the  cavern  near  Manresa,  Ignatius  would  sally  forth  occa¬ 
sionally  from  his  retreat,  dressed  like  the  poorest  of  beggars, 
with  matted  hair,  unshaven  beard,  sallow  and  sunken  cheeks, 
and  go  limping  slowly  and  painfully  through  the  streets  of 
the  town  to  beg  from  door  to  door  the  bread  needful  to  his 
sustenance.  Little  did  the  inhabitants,  who  gave  or  refused 
alms  to  the  stranger,  imagine  that  the  sickly,  emaciated, 
infirm  young  man,  was  one  of  their  own  proudest  nobles,  a 
soldier  who  had  gloriously  defended  the  honor  of  Spain. 
And  as  they  watched  him  limping  along  the  street  on  his 
shattered  limb,  the  little  boys,  thinking  him  demented, 
would  take  pleasure  in  following  him  with  jeer  and  scoff, 
as  ill-bred  children  are  apt  to  do.  But  whenever  they  did 
so,  Ignatius  would  stand  still,  and  with  downcast  eyes 
listen  to  their  crys  and  abuse,  as  if  their  words  of  scorn  and 
mockery  were  to  him  the  most  ravishing  of  earthly  harmo¬ 
nies. 

Where  our  Goocl  Name  involves  God V  s  Interests. 

Many  are  the  anecdotes  told  of  this  great-souled  man, 
attesting  his  supernatural  love  of  contempt  and  humilia¬ 
tion.  When,  however,  he  had  begun  to  bind  to  himself,  in 
the  University  of  Paris,  the  chosen  souls  who,  like  Francis 


OUR  GOOD  NAME  INVOLVES  GOD'S  INTERESTS.  295 


Xavier  and  Peter  Favre,  were  to  be  with  himself  the  foun¬ 
ders  of  the  apostolic  Society  of  Jesus,  he  was  not  willing 
that  any  stain  of  dishonor  should  fall  on  his  own  name  or 
that  of  his  companions, — because  he  knew  that  such  dis¬ 
grace  would  prevent  the  mighty  good  his  associates  were 
destined  of  God  to  do  in  both  hemispheres. 

Thus  having  been  once  accused  of  some  infraction  of  the 
University  rules,  he  was  unjustly  sentenced  by  the  faculty, 
to  undergo  the  shame  of  a  public  flagellation  before  the  as¬ 
sembled  students  and  professors.  He  allowed  the  proceed¬ 
ings  against  him  to  go  on  till  the  very  moment  came  when 
the  punishment  was  to  be  inflicted,  and  then  produced  such 
overwhelming  proofs  of  his  innocence,  that  he  received  the 
compliments  and  congratulations  of  the  very  judges  who 
had  so  hastily  condemned  him. 

This  same  zeal  for  the  good  name  of  his  infant  Society  he 
again  and  again  displayed  in  Italy,  and  with  such  success 
that  the  slanderers  were  silenced  forever. 

Thus  is  it  with  you,  young  men,  who  stand  before  the 
world  not  only  as  the  representatives  of  the  families  whose 
names  you  bear,  but  also  as  the  children  of  a  Father  and  a 
Mother,  whose  honor  is  in  your  keeping,  and  to  whom  your 
honor,  your  good  name  and  spotless  reputation,  are  trea¬ 
sures  that  you  cannot  compromise  or  barter  away  without 
deepest  guilt  and  undying  infamy. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


BOYHOOD. 


All,  tlien  how  sweetly  closed  those  crowded  days  ! 

The  minutes  parting  one  by  one,  like  rays 
That  fade  upon  a  summer’s  eve. 

But,  oh  !  what  charm,  or  magic  numbers. 

Can  give  me  back  the  gentle  slumbers 
Those  weary,  happy  days  did  leave  ? 

When  by  my  bed  I  saw  my  mother  kneel. 

And  with  her  blessing  took  her  nightly  kiss  ; 

Whatever  time  destroys ,  he  cannot  this — 

E’en  now  that  nameless  kiss  I  feel. 

Allston. 

% 

How  Boys  look  up  to  their  Father. 

If  fathers  only  knew  the  magic  power  they  possess  of  fill¬ 
ing  the  souls  of  their  boys, — while  boyhood’s  golden  day  is 
still  in  its  morning, — with  sweet  and  holy  memories  that  re¬ 
main  to  embalm  and  sanctify  a  whole  lifetime  !  Somehow, 
girls  look  to  their  mothers  for  all  that  makes  the  enchant¬ 
ment  of  their  earliest  years ;  but  a  boy,  with  the  instincts 
and  yearnings  of  manhood  strong  within  him,  will  look  up 
to  his  father  as  his  ideal,  — and  to  imitate  him  will  as  surely 
be  his  first  endeavor,  as  that  of  the  bird  impelled  to  leave 
the  nest,  will  be  to  try  its  wings  in  following  the  flight  of 
its  parent.  Grirls  are  like  sweet  and  delicate  flowers  that 
need  far  more  of  shade  than  of  sunshine,  shedding  their 
fragrance  and  displaying  their  loveliness  in  the  quiet  nooks 
of  the  garden,  or  along  the  shady  borders  of  some  lake  in 
the  woods.  Boys  are  like  the  trees  in  the  forest ;  they  will 

29  G 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  A  MOTHER’S  LOVE. 


297 


shoot  up  their  slender  stems  alongside  the  parent  trunk, 
stretching  ever  upward  to  s|3read  their  branches  in  the  full 
light  and  heat  of  noonday. 

Companionship  with  their  father  is  the  first  great  ambi¬ 
tion'  of  boys  to  whom  God  has  given  a  true  father,  one 
worthy  t6  be  admired  and  imitated  ;  outside  of  school- 
hours,  they  yearn  to  spend  with  him  every  moment  of  re¬ 
creation  and  repose.  From  their  mother  they  receive  in 
the  morning  and  evening,  as  it  were,  a  double  bath  of  life. 
A  boy  returns  to  his  mother1  s  arms  and  rests  in  the  sweet 
glow  of  her  affection  at  evening,  when  he  has  had  his  fill 
of  lusty  effort  and  outdoor  exercise,  as  naturally  as  the  lark, 
after  sunset,  descends  from  the  purple  clouds  where  he  has 
been  circling  and  carolling  since  early  dawn,  and  seeks  his 
nest  in  the  flowering  grasses.  Her  voice,  the  dear  light  of 
her  eyes,  her  smile,  and  her  caresses  have  on  every  faculty 
of  a  boy’ s  soul  the  same  effect  that  the  subdued  glow  of 
twilight,  the  stillness,  coolness,  and  dews  of  night  have  on 
growing  shrub  and  tree  after  the  parching  day,  the  wind, 
and  the  storm. 

The  caresses  of  maternal  love,  the  prayers  murmured  by 
her  side,  the  kiss  and  the  blessing  with  which  she  consigns 
her  dear  ones  to  sleep  and  to  the  keeping  of  their  Guardian 
Angels, — are,  in  very  truth,  the  sweetest  image  of  God’s 
infinite  tenderness.  The  lessons  of  piety  instilled  into  the 
willing  heart  of  boyhood  in  these  dear  evening  and  morning 
hours,  sink  as  naturally  into  its  very  substance  and  pene¬ 
trate  to  the  inmost  sources  of  spiritual  life,  as  surely  as  the 
dew  sinks  into  the  thirsty  soil  and  penetrates  by  every  j3ore 
of  tree  and  shrub  and  flower,  of  the  grass  on  the  meadow 
and  the  ripening  corn,  refreshing  and  invigorating  then*  ex¬ 
hausted  life-currents. 

A  Divine  Work  Divinely  Performed. 

Such  is  to  boyhood,  each  morning  and  evening,  the  loving 
office  of  motherhood,  the  complement  of  the  father’s  com¬ 
panionship  throughout  the  day.  Happy,  most  happy  the 


298 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


boys  whose  father’s  gentle  and  pions  care  lends  itself  with 
devout  and  grateful  eagerness  to  helping  this  office  of 
motherly  love.  What  may  not  be  expected  from  boyhood 
reared  beneath  the  united  influence  of  this  twofold  tender¬ 
ness  of  a  father  and  a  mother  whose  affection  is  sanctified 
by  the  divine  blessing,  and  whose  cooperation  in  training 
their  dear  ones,  is — they  know  and  feel  it — a  divine  work 
divinely  performed  ! 

Let  parents  forgive  us.  We  are  treating  of  sonship,  its 
duties,  and  its  virtues.  What  we  have  been  just  describing 
lies  at  the  very  root  of  all  filial  virtue  ;  such  nurture  as  we 
here  hint  at  disposes  the  soul  to  find  the  performance  of  all 
duty  sweet,  as  surely  as  the  loving  husbandry  of  the  gar¬ 
dener,  aided  by  the  late  and  the  early  rain,  and  all  the  gentle 
influences  of  the  heavens,  prepares  the  fruit  tree  to  bear  in 
autumn  its  most  delicious  fruit. 

The  Parents'  Ideal  in  their  Work. 

One  word,  then,  about  that  ideal  which  both  parents 
ought  to  keep  before  their  eyes  in  forming  the  soul  and  the 
exterior  deportment  of  every  one  of  their  boys.  Of  course, 
in  Catholic  homes  we  suppose  that  every  father,  who  has  at 
heart  the  preserving  of  his  boy’ s  soul  in  supernatural  grace, 
will  make  him  familiar  with  the  infancy  and  boyhood  of 
our  divine  Lord.  No  Catholic  home  ought  to  be  without 
“The  Life  of,  Christ,  by  St.  Bonaventura and  no  father 
ought  to  allow  a  single  year  to  pass  by  without  reading 
this  most  beautiful  book  to  all  his  children.  We  suppose, 
moreover,  that  they  are  made  acquainted  with  such  sweet 
models  of  boyish  innocence,  grace,  and  heroism  as  are 
found  in  the  lives  of  St.  Aloysius,  St.  Stanislaus  Kostka, 
Blessed  John  Berchmans,  and  others  that  we  need  not  name 
here. 

What,  however,  it  is  imperative  to  set  here  before  the 
minds  of  parents  and  boys  alike  is  some  living  exemplar  of 
lovely  youth  in  boys  brought  up  in  the  world  and  for  the 
world.  For  in  such  we  see  more  easily  models  that  young 


THE  EXEMPLAR  OF  LOVELY  YOUTIL 


299 


men  of  tlie  world  can  imitate,  models  which  will  draw  the 
eyes  and  the  hearts  of  boyhood,  and  inflame  them  with  a 
noble  emulation. 

Here,  then,  is  the  picture  of  a  noble  Christian  youth  from 
the  pen  of  a  woman  of  the  late  middle  age  : 

“He  was  a  vessel  of  all  goodness,  pitifulness,  benignity, 
and  sweetness.  In  his  boyhood  and  early  youth  he  was 
comely,  cheerful,  fond  of  pastime,  and  inclined  to  love  all 
that  was  honorable  and  could  be  loved  without  sin  :  he  was 
bright  and  gentle  in  his  manner,  having  always  kind  words 
to  say,  open-handed,  and  so  affable  and  gracious  in  his 
address  that  all  who  saw  him  were  drawn  to  him,  princes, 
princesses,  knights,  nobles,  and  folk  of  every  sort.  But 
when  the  good  duke  came  to  maturer  years,  all  this  joyous 
and  innocent  youth  turned  into  sense  and  moderation,  good 
counsel,  devotion,  and  constancy  ;  and  though  his  conduct 
was  ever  deserving  of  all  praise,  yet  he  now  seemed  to  ad¬ 
vance  still  higher  in  the  degrees  of  all  virtues.  He  was  a 
shining  model  of  charity :  he  used  to  succor  poor  geptle- 
men,  to  bestow  great  gifts  on  poor  monks  and  indigent 
clergymen  ;  to  poor  scholars  and  to  the  needy  of  every  con¬ 
dition  he  was  a  compassionate  and  bountiful  almsgiver. 
He  is  also  wont  to  dispense  abundant  alms  in  secret ;  he 
trusts  in  God  with  invincible  faith,  and  turns  to  Him  in  all 
his  necessities.”  * 

This  is  the  mirror  we  hold  up  to  parents.  For  the  guid¬ 
ance  of  mothers,  while  training  their  boys  to  all  manliness, 
we  have  laid  down  rules  in  another  work.f  So  now  we 
address  ourselves  directly  to  the  boy  and  the  young  man 
themselves. 

The  Two  Things  recommended  to  Boys. 

We  have  lived  all  our  lifetime  among  you,  O  you,  who 
are  so  dear  to  us,  that  we  should  willingly  give  time, 
strength,  life,  and  all  to  teach  you  the  right  road,  as  we 


*  Christine  de  Pisan,  Livre  des  Feds,  tome  ii. ,  ch.  xiv. 
f  See  “  The  Mirror  of  True  Womanhood.” 


300 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


now  see  it ;  to  fill  your  minds  with  noble  thoughts,  noble 
ideals,  noble  memories ;  to  inspire  you  with  noble  aims, 
noble  sentiments,  and  the  courage  that  is  equal  to  every 
noble  enterprise  :  we  would  fain  fill  your  hearts,  while  pur¬ 
suing  all  that  is  most  elevating  and  ennobling,  with  joy  so 
bright  and  so  overflowing,  that  your  course  should  resemble 
the  clear,  blue,  full  stream  of  the  Rhone  where  it  issues 
purified  from  the  Lake'  of  Geneva,  and  prepares  to  be  the 
glory  and  wealth  of  Southern  France. 

“We  have  two  qualities  in  our  souls,” — wrote  Plato  long 
ages  ago, — “  which  we  must  preserve  with  equal  solicitude  ; 
the  one  which  prompts  us  to  dare,  and  the  other  which  con¬ 
strains  us  to  fear : — to  be  bold  for  virtue,  and  to  be  afraid 
in  respect  to  vice.”  * 

We  purpose  to  point  out  to  you  here  in  a  few  pregnant 
words,  what  are  the  lawful  objects  on  which  boyhood  and 
youth  may  and  should  exercise  that  courage,  daring,  and 
generosity  of  spirit, — that  true  chivalry  which  is  innate  in 
them  ;  and  what,  on  the  other  hand,  are  those  enemies 
which  they  have  most  to  dread  while  running  their  race  of 
high-souled  generosity. 

Generosity  of  Spirit :  its  Object ,  DUTY. 

Begin  with  your  home-life.  Learn  early  how  to  ennoble 
every  act  of  yours  by  acquiring,  before  and  above  all  things, 
to  propose  as  the  motive  of  your  entire  life,  Duty.  Make 
of  the  lofty  sense  of  your  duty  to  God  the  motive  of  your 
duty  to  your  parents  ;  and  your  early  home-life  having 
been  thus  sanctified  by  perfect  conformity  to  the  Divine 
Will,  and  to  the  will  of  your  parents  in  view  of  the  Divine 
Majesty,  this  same  elevation  of  purpose  will  follow  you 
through  life  outside  of  the  paternal  home,  making  your 
whole  career  most  pleasing  in  the  sight  of  God  and  most 
lovely  before  men. 

Let  us  understand  this  well,  without  putting  this  vital 
practical  truth  into  a  form  that  may  at  all  savor  of  the  pul- 


*  De  Legibus,  i. 


WHAT  THINGS  BOYS  SHOULD  NOBLY  DARE. 


301 


pit,  the  catechism,  or  the  school-room.  We  know  that  we 
hold  our  being  throughout  this  life  and  the  eternity  of  the 
life  to  come  from  Him  whom  we  call  God  and  Father.  In 
the  early  chapters  of  this  book  is  set  forth  the  incomparable 
and  incomprehensible  generosity  with  which  he  so  disposes 
all  things  in  this  life  that  we  may  be  secure  in  serving  Him 
while  discharging  all  the  offices  of  true  manhoood,  and  that 
He  prepares  our  magnificent  reward  in  his  own  Eternal 
Home. 

He  is  our  God  and  our  Father  ; — owing  everything  to  Him, 
our  utmost  reach  of  generosity  in  His  service  is  rigorously 
due  to  Him.  He  alone  has  the  supreme  and  indisputable 
right  to  oblige  us,  to  bind  the  will  of  his  creature,  to  dis¬ 
pose  of  our  being,  our  time,  our  actions,  or  to  communicate 
to  others  any  share  of  that  imprescriptible  authority  over 
us,  that  essentially  belongs  to  Him  as  to  the  sole  Author  of 
all  things. 

The  Glory  of  Life  is  the  Discharge  of  Duty. 

Just  as  a  most  generous  and  high-souled  child  in  a  family 
would  deem  it  due  to  his  best  of  parents  ever  to  look  up  to 
him  in  order  to  ascertain  his  will  and  pleasure,  making  of  the 
fulfillment  of  the  paternal. will  and  pleasure,  the  pride  and 
joy  and  happiness  of  his  own  life  ; — even  so,  O  children  of 
God,  must  you  deem  it  your  highest  honor  and  make  it 
your  highest  happiness  to  look  up  to  that  Father,  most  wor¬ 
thy  of  all  love  and  praise  and  service,  and  to  place  in  the 
discharge  of  your  Duty  the  pride  and  glory  of  your  life. 

He  it  is  who  places  our  parents  over  us  in  the  home,  and 
our  superiors  over  us  in  Church  and  State.  Their  author¬ 
ity  is  derived  from  the  Divine  Author  of  our  being.  The 
reverence  and  obedience  we  pay  to  them  is  before  all  and 
above  all  due  to  Him.  The  fulfillment,  therefore,  of  all 
duty  in  the  home  and  outside  of  it  is  only  the  discharge  of 
a  most  sacred  obligation  to  Him  who  has  the  first  right  to 
command,  and  who  knows  how  to  reward  with  more  than 
royal  or  imperial  generosity  the  lowest  duty  as  well  as 


302 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


highest,  the  most  obscure  as  well  as  the  most  public  and 
glorious, — because  he  looks  to  the  heart  with  which  we  do  it. 

Precisely  because  this  loving  and  conscientious  discharge 
of  duty  is  so  dear  to  God  and  so  necessary  and  meritorious 
to  us,  He  implanted  in  the  very  depths  of  our  nature  what 
philosophers  and  theologians  call  the  moral  sense,  the  sense 
of  duty. 

Do  not  turn  away  from  this  page  with  the  notion,  that 
we  are  entering  upon  a  dull  and  dry  discussion  of  a  thing 
which  is  beyond  the  reach  of  most  men.  We  shall  en¬ 
deavor  to  make  this  important  matter  both  intelligible  and 
interesting  to  you. 

The  Sense  of  Duty , — Marts  Chie *  Character. 

God  gives  to  every  living  thing  faculties,  senses,  instincts 
most  admirably  adapted  to  the  kind  of  life  they  have  to 
lead.  The  bee  needs  no  education  or  training  to  prepare 
it  to  select  the  flowers  from  which  it  gathers  its  wax  and  its 
honey  ;  nor  does  it  study  the  rules  of  geometry  before  set¬ 
ting  about  the  construction  of  its  hive  ;  nor  has  it  to  learn 
the  topography  of  the  neighboring  country  in  order  to  make 
sure  of  finding  its  way  to  the  sweetest  flowers  or  the  rich¬ 
est  gardens,  and  then  to  retrace  its  path  home  to  the  hive. 
It  has  received  from  the  All- Wise  Creator  the  instinctive 
knowledge  that  enables  it  to  construct  its  hive  in  the  proper 
place,  to  fashion  the  powder  it  brings  home  so  as  to  produce 
the  best  wax ;  and  it  has  a  model  in  its  mind  of  every  cell 
that  it  builds,  so  that  no  architect’s  rule  and  compass  are 
needed  to  correct  its  measurements  or  improve  the  exqui¬ 
site  regularity  of  the  construction.  The  young  bee  as  it  first 
issues  from  its  pupa  state,  is  ready  for  its  work,  issues  forth 
to  gather  wax  and  honey  without  a  guide  to  lead  it  to  its 
working  grounds  ; — and,  no  matter  how  far  it  wanders  from 
the  hive,  it  wings  its  way  back  with  unerring  instinct. 

The  notions  of  right  and  wrong,  the  sense  of  duty  and 
obligation,  are,  within  the  human  soul,  instincts  derived 
from  nature,  like  the  powers  of  the  bee, — derived  rather 


DARE  TO  BE  ALL  GOD  WILLS  YOU  TO  BE. 


303 


from  the  divine  Author  of  nature,  —  with  this  difference, 
that  whereas  the  bee  is  born  perfect  and  able  at  once  to 
fulfill  the  end  of  its  existence,  man  is  only  born  perfectible, 
capable  of  attaining  by  education,  training,  self-culture  and 
meritorious  effort  the  full  moral  and  intellectual  perfection 
of  his  being. 


How  this  Sense  must  be  Developed  in  Boyhood. 

The  sense  of  duty,  with  its  corresponding  inborn  concep¬ 
tion  of  obligation,  of  right  and  wrong,  is  like  the  natural 
gift  of  music  and  the  vocal  power  of  song.  It  has  to  be 
directed  to  its  proper  object,  exercised,  developed,  and  per¬ 
fected. 

Thrice  happy  the  child,  when  the  light  of  conscious  rea¬ 
son  first  dawns  upon  his  soul,  whose  parent  is  at  hand  to 
instruct  him  in  the  knowledge  of  his  Almighty  Creator, 
sweetly  aiding  mind  and  heart  to  find  and  grasp  the  su¬ 
premely  True  and  Good  and  Fair, — just  as  the  first  tendrils 
of  the  vine-plant  are  trained  to  grasp  the  oak  on  which  it 
will  soon  hang  its  rich  clusters,  just  as  the  acorn  is  planted 
where  it  finds  a  congenial  soil  and  atmosphere,  with  sun¬ 
light  and  warmth  to  unfold  all  its  mighty  germs  of  strength 
and  durability ! 

The  man  in  whom  this  sense  of  duty  was  not  thus  early 
cultivated  and  developed,  remains  for  ever  stunted  in  his 
moral  growth,  incomplete  in  his  manhood,  a  failure  at  best, 
and  most  frequently  a  bane  to  society  and  a  curse  to  his 
fellow-men. 

Where  is  the  boy  not  deformed  in  intellect  by  a  wrong 
culture,  or  depraved  in  heart  by  vicious  association  or  self- 
indulgence,  who  does  not  yearn  to  become  a  perfect  man,  a 
true  man, — a  man  great  in  knowledge,  great  in  moral  worth, 
great  in  his  deeds,  great  in  the  eyes  of  God, — though  he 
may  not  care  to  be  great  in  the  esteem  and  judgment  of  the 
world  %  The  aspirations  of  the  heart  of  boyhood  and  youth, 
where  the  Christian  faith  is  the  light  in  which  all  things  are 
viewed  and  judged,  are  not  the  promptings  of  pride,  but 


304 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


the  sense  of  responsibility,  and  the  desire  to  be  all  that  God 
wills  each  one  to  be.  It  is  the  fully  grasped  sense  of  that 
awful  parable  where  the  great  King  distributes  talents  to  his 
servants  ere  he  departs  on  some  distant  expedition.  There 
are  splendid  rewards  for  those  who  double  their  gains  ;  for 
the  man  who  buries  his  gift,  there  is  nothing  but  despair 
and  gnashing  of  teeth. 

Baring  to  be  Great  and  Good  for  God?  s  salce. 

The  child  of  Catholic  parents  with  the  deep  and  abiding 
sense  of  duty  toward  Him  who  is  King,  and  Father,  and 
Judge,  will  not  be  apt  to  think  too  highly  of  his  own  fidel¬ 
ity  to  the  divine  trust :  he  will  rather,  in  that  true  humility 
inseparable  from  innocence  and  the  presence  of  divine  grace 
in  the  soul,  feel  disposed  to  see  only  his  own  shortcomings. 

We  would,  therefore,  where  a  boy’s  soul  is  noble  and 
fired  with  a  noble  ambition,  in  which  there  mingles  much 
more  of  the  desire  of  doing  God  good  service,  than  of  gain¬ 
ing  worldly  praise,  encourage  him  to  aim  high  and  do 
nobly, — to  be  a  man  among  men,  foremost  among  the  best, 
like  a  tree  of  generous  growth  aspiring  amid  its  fellows  of 
the  forest  to  rise  ever  higher  toward  the  sunlight,  the  free 
air,  and  the  broad,  bright  heavens,  struggling  to  overtop 
them  all, — and  that,  so  as  to  be  hindered  of  none  from 
spreading  its  uplifted  arms  to  the  sun,  the  dew,  and  the 
breeze. 

Provided  the  habitual  thought  and  love  of  God  with  the 
living  sense  of  duty  be  the  motive  power  of  your  life,  I  bid 
you  be  generous  and  dare  much. 

The  Lore  of  Duty  Tested. 

This  generous  sense  of  duty,  this  chivalrous  ambition  of 
being  foremost  in  all  that  is  good  and  most  pleasing  to 
the  Divine  Majesty,  must  be  proved  and  tested  by  loving, 
heart-felt,  and  constant  service  done  to  your  parents.  Un¬ 
less  your  boyhood  and  youth  bear  these  fruits  of  filial 


OBEDIENCE  A  DIVINE  VIRTUE. 


305 


obedience  and  all  most  loving  duty  to  father  and  mother, 
there  is  but  little  ground,  if  any,  to  liojDe  that  you  may  ever 
become  a  good  or  a  great  man.  He  never  was  a  conscien¬ 
tious,  faithful,  meritorious  servant  of  his  country  or  fellow- 
citizens,  who  was  a  bad  son  or  an  unnatural  brother. 

If  parents  only  follow  the  rules  given  above,  *  you  will 
have  in  them  such  models  as  you  will  glory  in  imitating, 
such  lofty  and  sweet  authority  as  shall  make  obedience 
both  easy  and  honorable.  Still  must  you  not  fail  either  in 
reverence  or  in  dutiful  obedience  even  when  they  are  not 
patterns  of  high  virtue,  or  distinguished  for  culture,  refine¬ 
ment,  and  amenity  of  disposition. 

Obey,  then,  promptly,  joyously,  lovingly, — setting  be¬ 
fore  your  mind  the  Eternal  Son  of  God  made  man,  who  so 
obeyed  for  thirty  long  years,  thereby  setting  a  pattern  to 
the  boyhood  and  youth  of  all  time,  whether  living  beneath 
the  paternal  roof,  or  reared  outside  of  it  under  proper  mas¬ 
ters  for  the  exercise  of  that  profession,  which  they  are  in 
due  time  to  honor  by  all  the  excellence  of  manly  virtue. 

Remember,  that,  in  the  old  chivalrous  ages,  there  was 
nothing  to  which  boys  and  young  men,  who  aspired  to  the 
rank  of  knighthood,  applied  themselves  so  readily,  as  to 
acquire  the  praise  of  obedience.  For  he  alone  was  deemed 
worthy  to  lead,  who  had  long  learned  to  follow  ;  he  alone 
was  judged  fit  to  command,  who  had  learned  to  obey ;  he 
alone  could  hope  to  attain  supreme  perfection  in  any  craft 
or  profession,  who  had  sat  for  years  under  wise  and  skilled 
masters,  till  he  had  himself  become  a  thorough  master  in 
what  could  alone  raise  him  to  the  first  rank. 

Obedience  is  Heroic  Lore. 

Beside  the  universally  acknowledged  necessity  of  this 
preparatory  discipline  to  the  young,  there  is  in  the  hap¬ 
piness  which  such  loving  submission  causes  to  parents,  a 
something  that  must  appeal  powerfully  to  the  frank  and 
generous  spirit  of  boyhood.’  How  many  noble  boys  have 


20 


*  Chapters  X.,  XI. 


306 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


we  not  known  who  could  not  brook  the  thought  of  dis¬ 
obeying  even  in  the  most  trifling  matters,  because  they  felt 
themselves  how  exquisite  was  the  pleasure  they  gave  their 
parents  by  their  constant  and  perfect  obedience, — their  true 
love  making  them  fear  to  cast  the  slightest  shadow  over  this 
happiness ! 

We  who  are  grown  old  and  look  back  with  such  mingled 
feelings  of  regret  and  pleasure  over  the  past  years, — know 
how  sweet  above  all  sweetness,  is  the  memory  of  a  parent’s 
delight,  manifested  by  loving  word  or  look  or  caress  in  ap¬ 
proval  of  generous  obedience  or  duty  faithfully  fulfilled. 

Listen  to  what  one  who  had  searched  all  the  ancient  lit¬ 
erature  of  Christendom,  as  he  had  explored  its  castles, 
palaces,  and  monasteries,  in  quest  of  the  records  of  Chris¬ 
tian  chivalry,  says  of  this  spirit  of  obedience  as  practiced 
by  our  forefathers : 

44The  squire  of  chivalry  had  to  perform  the  most  labori¬ 
ous  offices,  and  the  blow  which  he  received  on  admission  to 
the  order  was  to  denote  the  sufferings  for  which  he  had 
still  to  prepare  himself.  Bfisching  remarks  that  4  the  habit 
of  obedience,  the  principle  of  which  was  derived  from  the 
patriarchal  ages,  thus  learned  in  youth,  was  a  noble  prepa¬ 
ration  for  subsequent  command.  The  progress,  to  knight¬ 
hood  was  long  and  gradual ;  nothing  sudden  hurried  the 
boy  from  an  unwarlike  service  to  the  life  of  peril.  Every 
one  had  to  obey  and  learn,  so  that  step  by  step  he  might 
become  familiar  with  the  dangers  and  troubles  of  a  chival¬ 
rous  life.’  Equally  admirable  were  the  effects  of  this  educa¬ 
tion  in  regard  to  religion  and  the  cultivation  of  the  mind. 
The  saints  have  shown  that  the  way  of  holiness  lies  in 
obedience  and  observance  of  the  most  minute  rules.  That 
furious  ardor  for  bursting  every  restraint  which  possesses 
so  many  of  the  moderns,  ends,  we  find,  in  the  subjection  of 
the  soul  to  the  passions,  or  in  the  loss  of  reason. 

44  No  rank  was  then  exempt  from  obedience.  Yon  Gra- 
venberg  relates  how  his  hero,  Wigolais,  though  a  king’s 
son,  was  bred  up  like  other  boys,  to  discharge  every  kind 
of  youthful  service.  The  squire  and  the  knight  were  able 


DARE  TO  BE  SELF-DENYING. 


307 


to  say,  like  the  youth  in  Athenseus,  ‘  If  a  ladder  must  be 
mounted,  I  am  a  goat ;  if  a  blow  is  to  be  endured,  I  am  an 
anvil ;  for  drinking  water,  I  am  a  frog ;  for  bearing  the 
winter’s  cold  without  shelter,  I  am  a  blackbird, — the  sum¬ 
mer  heat,  a  grasshopper  ;  for  walking  barefoot  any  moment 
in  the  morning,  a  crane  ;  for  passing  a  sleepless  night,  a 
bat.’  ”  * 

So  much  on  this  divine  generosity  which  boyhood  can 
display  in  the  loving  obedience  paid  to  parents  or  to  all 
who  hold  their  place. 

The  divine  Strength  and  Joy  springing  from  Obedience. 

Boys  do  not  always,  indeed,  only  a  small  number  do  ever, 
appreciate  or  understand  the  force  of  soul  derived  from  this 
habit  of  obedience,  especially  when  it  is  founded  on  the 
supernatural  motive  mentioned, — imitation  of  the  Incarnate 
God. 

Persons  who  begin  to  practice  what  is  known  as  “moun¬ 
taineering,” — the  climbing  of  the  loftiest  mountains  and  the 
most  inaccessible  peaks,  — are  at  first  conscious  only  of  the 
fatigue  and  the  danger  accompanying  their  efforts.  But,  by 
degrees,  to  the  sense  of  danger  succeeds  that  of  security, 
and  fatigue  diminishes  with  exercise,  while  success  in  as¬ 
cending  one  elevation  after  another,  imparts  not  only  de¬ 
light  to  the  soul,  but  ever-increasing  vigor  and  power  of 
endurance  to  the  limbs. 

•  Even  so  has  God,  the  author  of  our  nature,  so  disposed 
things,  that  the  discipline  of  obedience,  when  generously 
undergone,  imparts  to  the  will  power  to  overcome  difficul¬ 
ties  seemingly  insurmountable. 

Dare  to  be  obedient,  then,  and  to  emulate  in  this  heroic 
discipline  of  self-subjection  your  Guide  and  Master,  Christ ! 

Dare  also  to  be  temperate  and  self-denying.  This,  evi¬ 
dently,  was  understood  to  be  an  integral  part  of  the  hardy 
and  wholesome  discipline  imposed  on  our  forefathers  in 
their  boyhood  and  youth. 


*  Kenelm  Henry  Digby,  “  Orlandus,”  i.,  pp.  351,  352. 


308 


TRUE  MEN  ^IaS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


One  unpracticed  in  husbandry  might  complain  of  the 
skilled  gardener  who,  when  he  has  fruit  trees  of  great  pro¬ 
mise,  will  set  about  pruning  them,  lopping  off  branches  on 
every  side,  and  thereby  destroying  the  grace  and  symme¬ 
try  of  his  favorites.  Nay,  he  does  more  than  that ;  when 
springtide  calls  forth  all  the  loveliness  of  his  garden,  and 
every  tree  is  covered  with  its  sweet  blossoms,  the  gardener 
will  watch  each  blossom  as  it  falls  to  give  place  to  the  pre¬ 
cious  fruit, — mercilessly  cutting  away  the  flowers  and  fruits 
that  he  deems  superfluous  or  threaten  to  overload  the 
branches  and  overtax  the  vitality  of  the  tree,  sparing  only 
the  fruit  which  promises  to  be  excellent,  and  by  its  very 
excellence  to  compensate  for  the  loss  of  quantity. 

The  Pruned  Tree  bears  the  Richest  Fruit. 

Boyhood  is  the  fruit  tree,  covered  with  the  fair  and  exu¬ 
berant  blossoms  of  promise.  Who  would  bear  fruits  of  un¬ 
questioned  excellence,  must  allow  the  wise  and  foreseeing 
husbandry  of  a  father,  a  mother,  or  a  master’s  hand  to 
prune,  and  to  graft,  and  to  retrench  even  the  sweetest  flow¬ 
ers  of  natural  wealth.  ♦ 

A  tree  allowed  to  grow  up  in  a  rich  soil,  unpruned  and 
untrained,  in  its  own  wild  luxuriance,  will  either  run  alto¬ 
gether  into  barren  leaf,  or  produce,  year  after  year,  a  crop 
of  fruit  of  decreasing  value  in  savor,  in  quality,  in  all  real 
excellence. 

So  is  it  with  a  boy  who  is  allowed  to  indulge,  unre¬ 
strained,  all  his  appetites,  and  to  follow  without  hindrance 
the  bent  of  all  his  inclinations. 

“  The  Spaniard” — says  Landor — “has  the  qualities  of 
the  cedar,  patient  of  cold  and  heat,  nourished  on  little,  lofty 
and  dark,  unbending  and  incorruptible.”  Prescott,  in  re¬ 
counting  the  conquest  of  Mexico,  sets  forth  the  extraordi¬ 
nary  abstemiousness  and  power  of  endurance  of  Cortes  and 
his  companions.  A  small  ration  of  bread  or  Indian  corn 
distributed  to  each  soldier  once  in  the  twenty-four  hours, 
was  sufficient  to  sustain  the  heroic  band  amid  the  literally 


HEROIC  TWIN  VIRTUES. 


309 


unceasing  attacks  of  the  Mexicans  who  surrounded  them 
on  every  side  ;  and  for  months  they  had  to  subsist  on  this, 
while  performing  feats  of  valor  and  undergoing  fatigues 
which  appear  incredible  to  modern  readers.  But  no  other  . 
nation  save  one  habitually  temperate  and  abstemious  to  an 
uncommon  degree  could  have  borne  up  against  this  accu¬ 
mulation  of  labor  and  suffering.  Nor  has  the  Spaniard  of 
to-day  degenerated  from  the  lofty  picture  drawn  of  him  by 
Landor. 

Such  was  also  the  ancient  Republican  Roman  as  painted 
by  Livy,  “  with  a  soul  that  nothing  could  conquer,  an  in¬ 
tegrity  that  nothing  could  corrupt ;  despising  riches,  absti¬ 
nent  and  patient  of  labor,  of  an  iron  frame  and  will.”  * 

Temperance  and  Piety  go  hand  in  hand. 

In  the  heroic  ballad  poetry  which  describes  the  struggle 
maintained  for  eight  centuries  by  Christian  Spain  against 
the  Mohammedan, — the  noblest  national  poetry  in  exist¬ 
ence, — you  have  all  the  great  virtues  of  the  true  man  de¬ 
scribed  and  illustrated  in  the  lives  of  numberless  warriors. 

In  the  poem  of  the  Cid  a  recreant  knight  is  thus  con¬ 
demned  : 

“  You  breakfast  before  mass, 

You  drink  before  you  pray  ; 

There  is  no  honor  in  your  heart, 

Nor  truth  in  what  you  say.” 

It  was  the  custom  for  all, — for  knights,  particularly, — to 
hear  mass  daily.  As  this  was  the  commemoration  of  His 
sacrifice  who  refused  at  the  very  moment  of  crucifixion  and 
at  the  height  of  his  agony  on  the  cross,  to  drink  even  the 
wine  and  gall  which  would  have  made  him  insensible  to 
pain, — so  men  who  professed  to  imitate  Him  in  self-sacrifice 
and  denial  deemed  it  monstrous  to  assist  at  the  divine  com¬ 
memoration  otherwise  than  fasting.  Nor  was  it  less  incon¬ 
sistent  to  assuage  one’s  thirst  before  having  offered  up  one’s 
morning  adoration  to  God. 


*  History,  xxxix.  40. 


310 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Would  that  such  custom,  together  with  the  deep  spirit  of 
faith  from  which  it  sprung,  was  more  general  among  us 
here  in  this  New  World  ! 

In  the  life  of  Henry  IV.  of  France,  it  is  related  that  he 
was  from  infancy  inured  to  all  manner  of  hardship.  He 
was  made  to  go  with  boys  of  his  own  age,  barefooted  and 
bareheaded,  to  climb  his  native  mountains.  If  he  could 
only  have  retained  these  habits  and  all  akin  to  these  until 
his  dying  day,  what  a  noble  record  had  been  his !  The 
brave  Hu  Guesclin,  and  Bayard,  the  mode]  knight,  were 
trained  in  the  same  healthful  school  of  temperance. 

St.  Louis  in  his  Boyhood ,  your  Model. 

These  were  all  men  of  the  world.  Let  us  say  one  word 
of  another  who,  while  discharging  all  the  duties  of  a  sove¬ 
reign,  a  soldier,  a  father,  and  a  master,  showed  himself  all 
through  life,  from  earliest  boyhood  till  his  too  early  death, 
the  most  faultless  and  glorious  model  of  every  age. 

St.  Louis,  King  of  France  (Louis  IX. ),  had  for  his  com¬ 
panion,  friend,  and  biographer,  the  Sire  de  Joinville,  from 
whose  life-like  portraiture  we  borrow  a  few  traits. 

u  The  Saint,”  says  he,  “  loved  truth  to  such  a  degree, 
that  even  with  the  Saracens  he  would  not  draw  back  from 
what  he  had  promised  them.  As  to  his  appetite,  he  was  so 
indifferent,  that  never  in  my  life  did  I  hear  him  ask  for  any 
particular  dish,  as  many  rich  men  do,  but  he  ate  content¬ 
edly  of  what  the  cooks  served  up  to  him.  He  was  measured 
in  his  speech  ;  for  never  in  my  life  did  I  hear  him  speak  ill 
of  any  one,  nor  did  I  ever  hear  him  name  the  devil,  a  name 
widely  spread  through  the  realm,  which  cannot,  I  think,  be 
pleasing  to  God.  He  diluted  his  wine  by  measure,  accord¬ 
ing  as  he  saw  the  wine  could  bear  it.  He  asked  me  in 
Cyprus  why  I  put  no  water  into  my  wine  ;  and  I  answered 
him  the  reason  was  because  the  physicians  had  told  me 
that  I  had  a  large  head  and  a  cold  stomach,  and  therefore 
need  not  fear  becoming  intoxicated.  He  replied  that  they 
deceived  me  ;  for  if  I  did  not  learn  in  my  youth  to  dilute 


THE  BOY-KING'S  ABSTEMIOUSNESS. 


311 


my  wine,  and  wished  to  do  it  in  my  old  age,  I  should  be 
attacked  with  gout  and  pains  in  my  stomach,  so  that  I 
should  never  have  health  ;  and  if  in  my  old  age  I  drank 
wine  by  itself,  I  should  become  intoxicated  every  evening, 
and  it  was  a  sorry  thing  for  a  man  of  worth  to  get  drunk.”  * 

The  heroic  king  carried  his  abstemiousness  much  farther 
than  is  related  of  him  here.  He  was  only  a  boy — eleven 
years  old — when  he  succeeded  to  the  throne  in  1226.  Still, 
even  at  that  age, — so  carefully  had  he  been  brought  up  by 
his  admirable  mother,  Blanche  of  Castile, — he  showed  him¬ 
self  endowed  with  the  virtues  of  ripe  manhood.  He  had 
learned  under  his  mother’s  training  “  to  be  perfect  master 
in  the  house  of  his  own  soul,”  that  is,  to  hold  under  con¬ 
trol  his  temper,  his  appetites,  and  his  passions. 

Let  our  young  readers  not  turn  away  in  dismay  or  dis¬ 
couragement  from  the  perfect  virtue  of  this  gentle  boy-king, 
as  if  it  were  an  ideal  too  far  above  the  reach  of  boyish  imi¬ 
tation.  Such  virtue  was  not  so  very  uncommon  in  the  thir¬ 
teenth  century.  Boys  of  all  classes,  in  town  and  country, 
bore  stamped  upon  their  features  something  of  the  sweet 
supernatural  piety,  the  modest,  open  air  of  unsuspecting 
innocence  that  we  read  of  in  Aloysius  Gonzaga  and  Stanis¬ 
laus  Kostka.  These  were  ages  of  faith,  when  childhood, 
boyhood,  youth  and  early  manhood  were  kept  as  free  from 
the  knowledge  of  all  moral  evil,  as  the  heart  of  the  rosebud 
is  closed  against  the  outside  air  till  such  time  as  it  can  un¬ 
fold  itself  to  the  sunlight. 

With  that  candor,  simplicity,  and  childlike  humility, 
were  united  robust  health  and  a  manly  eagerness  for  all  dis¬ 
cipline  that  could  enable  the  boy  to  become  the  accomplished 
youth,  and  the  man  to  be  fit  for  all  the  duties  and  responsi¬ 
bilities  of  his  station  in  life. 

Dare  to  Excel  in  whatever  you  do. 

Boys,  moreover,  were  then  trained  in  the  notion  that  to 
excel  in  the  avocation  to  which  they  were  born  and  trained, — 


*  Hutton's  translation. 


312 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


though  only  that  of  the  craftsman,  the  farmer,  or  the  shep¬ 
herd, — was  to  fulfill  the  Divine  Will,  and  to  render  one’s 
self  deserving  of  the  highest  reward  in  the  gift  of  the  all- 
knOwing  and  all- just.  They  were  all  taught  that  the  poor 
carpenter  Joseph  and  his  humble  companion  Mary,  though 
filling  only  obscure  and  lowly  stations  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world,  were  most  dear  to  the  heart  of  God  and  most  exalted 
in  the  reverence  of  Christian  ages.  They  knew,  from  the 
lives  of  the  Saints  familiar  to  them  in  the  household  teach¬ 
ing,  and  enshrined  within  their  churches,  or  sculptured  in 
stone  on  cathedral  porch,  or  pictured  in  the  lofty  stained- 
glass  windows, — that  there  were  canonized  gardeners  like 
St.  Isidore,  the  patron  of  Spain,  canonized  craftsmen  like 
St.  Eligius  of  Noyon,  canonized  shepherds  like  St.  Gene¬ 
vieve,  canonized  servants  like  St.  Zita  and  St.  Margaret  of 
Louvain,  canonized  slaves  like  St.  Blandina,  and  so  many 
others.  The  very  apostles,  who  were  universally  revered  as 
the  spiritual  parents  of  the  Christian  world,  were  fishermen 
who  plied  their  trade  on  the  Lake  of  Galilee, — and  their 
Master  was,  in  his  day,  held  by  his  countrymen  to  be  only 
a  carpenter’s  son,  and  a  carpenter  himself,  a  near  kinsman 
of  these  same  Galileans,  his  first  disciples  and  the  apostles 
of  his  faith. 

So,  true  manhood  in  the  lowest  ranks  of  Christian  society 
was  held  to  have  its  ideal  perfection  in  being  able  to  fulfill 
successfully  the  labors  and  duties  of  one’s  calling, — moral 
and  spiritual  excellence  alone  entitling  either  the  peasant 
or  the  prince,  the  craftsman  or  the  king  to  supreme  glory 
in  heaven  or  supreme  honor  on  earth,  to  reign  with  Christ 
in  eternity,  or  here  below  to  occupy  among  the  multitude 
of  holy  men  and  women  a  niche  over  altar  or  porch  in  God’s 
earthly  temple. 

So,  the  pursuit  of  all  intellectual  and  moral  excellence 
necessary  to  one’s  condition  and  compatible  with  one’s 
duties, — all  in  conformity  with  His  will  for  whom  alone  all 
labored, — such  was  the  conviction  which  regulated  the  aim 
and  ambition  of  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  these  ages 
of  faith,  so  little  known  by  our  modern  world. 


TEE  TRUE  MAN  PERFECT  IN  HIS  CALLING. 


313 


Why  the  Boy -King,  St.  Louis ,  is  proposed  as  a  Model. 

Do  not  fancy,  therefore,  that  the  lovely  figure  of  the  boy- 
king,  Louis  IX.,  is  that  of  one  whom  you  may  not  and 
should  not  imitate.  Even  though  a  king  in  his  own  right 
at  eleven,  he  continued  to  be  in  all  things  subject  to  his 
mother,  the  Regent,  till  his  majority.  But  as  he  had  been 
from  childhood  the  most  loving,  tender,  respectful,  and 
obedient  of  sons,  so  he  continued  all  through  his  youth  and 
manhood,  till  that  most  admirable  parent  was  taken  from 
him. 

She  had  taught  him  to  be  gentle,  and  temperate,  and 
abstemious,  and  austere  in  his  own  private  life  ; — not  only 
abstemious  in  the  use  of  wine,  from  which  he  abstained 
altogether  during  entire  seasons,  and  which  he  never  used 
save  in  small  quantities  and  mixed  with  water, — but  in 
all  other  things.  He  never  would  allow  himself  to  taste 
delicacies  of  any  kind,  such  as  very  rare  fruits,  or  fruits 
when  they  first  began  to  be  sold  in  the  market  and  were 
very  dear.  He  wore  frequently,  and  for  whole  days  to¬ 
gether,  a  hair  shirt  beneath  his  robes  or  his  heavy  armor. 
King  as  he  was,  he  was  an  enemy  to  extravagance  or  costli¬ 
ness  in  dress.  On  state  occasions  he  appeared  with  becom¬ 
ing  magnificence,  just  as  his  hospitality  was  always  magni¬ 
ficent.  But  outside  of  such  occasions,  his  dress  was  of  the 
simplest  kind,  as  his  diet  was  ever  of  the  plainest  food. 

With  all  that,  he  was  every  inch  a  king,  a  statesman,  and 
a  soldier,  as  all  the  world  knows. 

You  also,  who  are  of  the  boy-king’s  age,  must  dare  to 
be,  like  him,  most  generous  in  dutiful  respect  and  obedience 
to  your  parents  and  masters  ;  most  generous  in  self-con¬ 
trol  and  self-denial, — in  temperance,  meekness,  modesty,  in 
purity  of  soul  and  body,  in  studiousness,  love  of  labor  and 
self-cultivation,  in  ambition  to  be  first  in  God’s  favor,  and  in 
accomplishing  al]  that  is  most  difficult  and  heroic  in  order 
to  become  His  worthy  servants  and  sons. 

Of  what  you  must  fear  and  shun  we  make  no  special  men- 


814 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


tion  at  present.  By  practicing  the  virtues  above  enume¬ 
rated  you  will  be  sufficiently  guarded  against  the  evils  most 
to  be  feared  at  your  age.  Besides,  what  is  said  in  the  chap¬ 
ter  immediately  preceding  this,  and  elsewhere  throughout 
this  book,  on  the  obstacles  to  true  manliness  of  character, 
will  teach  you  what  we  would  have  you  avoid  and  abhor. 

We  must  not  leave  you,  0  children  of  God,  without  sub¬ 
mitting  to  you,  not  for  the  mere  purpose  of  admiration  only, 
but  for  that  of  imitation,  one  instance  which  you  will  your¬ 
selves,  we  doubt  it  not,  judge  worthy  of  being  honored  by 
a  careful  remembrance. 

If  you  would  look  with  veneration  upon  the  heroic  figures 
of  seven  boys, — the  sons  of  a  sublime  mother, — then  turn 
to  what  we  have  elsewhere  written.*  Here  we  only  relate 
how  a  boy  ten  years  old  succeeded  in  a  few  weeks  in  conquer¬ 
ing  himself  with  a  heroism  that  may  well  put  to  the  blush 
so  many  cowardly  men  of  mature  years,  who  remain  the 
slaves  of  their  passions  and  evil  habits  till  Death  hands 
them  over,  chained  hand  and  foot,  to  the  Eternal  Judge. 

A  Lesson  for  every  Generous  Boy . 

The  child  belonged  to  parents  most  gentle  and  most  ex¬ 
emplary  in  every  way,  who  were  sadly  distressed  by  his 
passionate  temper,  breaking  out  at  the  slightest  provoca¬ 
tion  into  fits  of  rage  that  bordered  on  downright  insanity. 
He  had  at  one  time  very  severely  wounded  his  father’ s  gar¬ 
dener,  striking  him  on  the  cheek  with  a  pruning  knife, 
because  he  would  not  be  allowed  to  mangle  a  beautiful 
pear  tree ;  and  on  another  occasion,  he  well-nigh  killed  his 
little  sister  because  she  would  not  give  up  to  him  some 
favorite  plaything.  At  table  the  boy,  if  contradicted  or 
thwarted  in  his  taste,  would  hurl  plates  and  dishes  to  the 
floor,  or  strike  his  brothers  and  sisters  with  whatever  was 
nearest  to  his  hand. 

Every  imaginable  remedy  had  been  resorted  to  by  his 

*See  tlie  Story  of  the  Suffering  of  the  Seven  Machabee  Martyrs  in  “Heroic 
Women  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church,”  chapter  xix.,  p,  201. 


HOW  TO  CONQUER  ONE’S  EVIL  SELF. 


315 


parents, — the  most  loving  arts  of  persuasion,  severe  bodily 
punishment,  confinement  on  bread  and  water ;  and  all  had 
utterly  failed  to  make  the  slightest  impression  on  a  na¬ 
ture  that  no  chastisement  could  frighten  and  no  tenderness 
soften.  He  was  sent  to  school  under  masters  who  had  had 
wide  experience  in  training,  youth  both  in  the  Old  World 
and  in  the  New.  It  was  hoped  that  contact  with  a  large 
number  of  other  boys,  the  pious  atmosphere  of  the  school 
itself,  and  the  ascendency  of  renowned  and  exemplary  mas-  ‘ 
tens,  would  call  forth  the  latent  germs  of  good  qualities  in 
the  soul  of  the  hitherto  incorrigible  boy.  Besides,  he  was 
now  of  an  age  to  prepare  for  first  Communion,  and  this 
religious  event,  his  excellent  parents  fondly  believed,  would 
induce  him  to  practice  self-repression  and  control. 

They  were  sadly  disappointed.  The  boy  was  exceedingly 
clever,  and  outstripped  in  learning  all  his  companions,  when 
he  choose  to  apply  himself.  But  his  fits  of  application 
were  as  irregular  and  as  rare  as  his  fits  of  outrageous  vio¬ 
lence  were  frequent  and  unaccountable.  He  could  not  be 
admitted  to  first  Communion  when  the  appointed  time  had 
arrived,  and  his  masters,  after  exhausting  every  method  and 
experiment,  sent  him  back  to  his  parents  before  the  end  of 
the  term. 

This  was  a  great  grief  to  both  father  and  mother, — to  the 
latter  most  especially.  She  fancied  that  her  child’s  evil 
disposition  was  a  secret  judgment  on  herself,  and  searched 
her  conscience  in  vain  for  the  dreadful  sin  that  must  have 
drawn  down  this  visitation  on  her  home.  She  resolved, 
with  the  advice  of  her  spiritual  guide,  to  try  another  year’s 
schooling  under  the  same  revered  masters,  and  was  sus¬ 
tained  in  the  eloquent  appeal  she  made  to  them  by  the 
highest  religious  authority  in  the  diocese.  The  president 
of  the  institution  could  not  resist  a  mother’ s  tears,  the  tears 
especially  of  such  a  mother.  And  so  another  trial  was 
given  to  the  froward  boy,  now  beginning  his  eleventh  year. 

His  parting  with  his  mother  was  most  touching.  Folding 
him  again  and  again  to  her  heart,  and  covering  him  with 
tears  and  kisses,  she  told  him,  before  his  master,  that  she 


316 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


prayed  God  to  take  him  from  her  rather  than  allow  him  to 
continue  obdurate  to  all  teaching  and  good  example.  For 
the  first  time  in  his  life  the  boy  was  seen  to  weep  tears  of 
genuine  grief  as  he  returned  his  mother’s  caresses. 

There  seemed  to  be,  at  first,  some  slight  change  for  the 
better  ;  but  the  old  temper  soon  broke  forth,  fiercer  and 
uglier  than  ever.  Still  it  was  resolved  to  carry  forbearance 
to  its  most  extreme  limits  ;  and  things  went  on  from  bad  to 
worse,  till  the  time  had  come  for  the  formation  of  the  first 
Communion  class. 

The  ungovernable  child  was  then  called  to  the  room  of 
the  chaplain, — a  holy  man  on  whose  gentle  features  holi¬ 
ness  and  goodness  were  stamped.  “  Charles,”  said  he, 
addressing  the  little  savage  before  him,  “you  have  been 
more  violent  and  insubordinate  these  last  four  weeks  than 
we  have  ever  before  known  you  to  be.  Had  there  been 
amendment  since  school  re-opened,  you  should  be  now  ad¬ 
mitted  to  the  first  Communion  class.  As  it  is,  your  dread¬ 
ful  violence  has  made  you  insupportable  to  your  school¬ 
mates,  many  of  whom  threaten  to  leave  if  you  are  allowed 
to  remain  here.  Your  masters  say  they  can  do  nothing 
with  you.  So  it  has  been  resolved  by  the  faculty  that  you 
shall  be  sent  home  to-morrow.  .  .  .  My  dear  boy,  this  will 
break  your  mother’s  heart.” 

All  of  a  sudden,  at  these  last  words,  as  if  the  grief- 
stricken  mother  had  risen  up  to  reproach  him, — the  boy 
fell  on  his  knees  in  an  agony  of  tears,  weeping  uncon¬ 
trollably  for  several  minutes,  clinging  to  the  knees  of  his 
venerable  friend,  and  hiding  his  head  on  his  bosom.  At 
length  he  gasped  out  painfully,  “Spare  my  mother !  spare 
my  mother  !  It  will  kill  her.  ...  I  will  change, — indeed 
I  will.  Only  allow  me  to  prepare  for  my  first  Communion ; 
and  help  me  to  overcome  my  temper.”  .  .  .  Here  the  child 
broke  down  completely,  and  began  to  weep  and  sob  con¬ 
vulsively.  The  good  chaplain  sent  for  the  president  and 
the  infirmarian.  For  the  little  penitent,  in  the  sudden 
extremity  of  his  grief,  had  swooned  away,  and  blood  began 
to  flow  from  mouth  and  nose.  It  was  feared  that  he  had 


HOW  TO  CONQUER  ONE'S  EVIL  SELF. 


317 


burst  a  blood-vessel.  Happily  this  was  not  so,  and  a  few 
hours  of  repose  in  the  infirmary  restored  the  sufferer  to  his 
equanimity.  But  there  was  a  blessed  and  total  change  in 
that  ardent  and  passionate  soul. 

You,  dear  reader,  who  know  how  potent  with  God  are  a 
mother’s  prayers,  how  irresistible  the  pleading  of  her  tears, 
will  recall  Monica  and  Augustine,  and  say  that  the  Creator 
of  that  young  heart  had,  at  a  mother’s  supplication,  touched 
its  springs  of  generosity,  and  awakened  in  it  a  new  and 
divine  power, — that  of  self-repression. 

From  that  day  forth  that  boyish  life  became  one  uninter¬ 
rupted  series  of  heroic  struggles  with  self,  of  heroic  victo¬ 
ries  over  self.  This  is  no  mere  exaggerated  assertion.  It  is 
a  lesson  full  of  loftiest  teaching  for  every  one  of  us,  no 
matter  what  our  age  or  station. 

The  chaplain,  to  help  the  boy  as  he  had  desired,  gave 
him  a  little  note-book,  on  which  he  was  to  mark,  twice  each 
day,  on  opposite  pages,  his  “victories”  over  self  by  re¬ 
pressing  his  outbursts  of  temper,  or  his  “defeats”  when¬ 
ever  he  yielded  to  his  passion.  Charles  was  thoroughly  and 
terribly  in  earnest.  The  battle  for  him  was  during  class 
hours  and  play-time.  He  had  few,  if  any,  friends  among 
schoolmates  or  play-fellows.  For,  with  all  his  ferocious 
outbreaks  of  temper,  he  did  not,  till  that  time,  give  evi¬ 
dence  of  a  single  generous  quality.  His  hand  and  his 
tongue  had  been  against  everybody  in  the  school ;  and 
everybody’s  tongue  and  hand  seemed  to  be  against  him. 

So,  he  was,  at  first,  given  but  little  credit  for  his  earnest 
desire  to  improve,  and  but  little  encouragement  to  do  well. 
There  were  many  who  had  old  scores  to  settle  with  him, 
and  not  a  few  who  were  disposed  to  sneer  at  his  real  or  as¬ 
sumed  self-restraint,  and  all  too  ready  to  sting  him  by  jest 
and  scoff.  Nevertheless,  after  the  three  first  days, — as  the 
marks  in  his  little  note-book  attested, — he  was  never  once 
known  to  give  way  to  angry  word  or  action !  All  the 
marks,  till  the  day  of  his  death,  were  on  the  side  of  vic¬ 
tory. 

This  result,  however,  was  not  achieved  without  fearful 


318 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


struggles  with  his  interior  enemy.  One  day,  during  recre¬ 
ation  hours,  the  chaplain  was  summoned  to  the  infirmary, 
whither,  it  was  said,  Charles  had  been  carried  wounded  and 
bleeding  from  some  fray.  Bleeding  he  was,  it  is  true,  but 
it  was  a  self-inflicted  wound.  A  larger  boy  had  struck  and 
beaten  him  cruelly  for  running  across  the  cricket- field  and 
tripping  up  one  of  the  players,  and  the  poor  child  had  bitten 
his  lip  through  and  through  in  his  desperate  effort  at  self- 
control. 

It  was  soon  evident  to  all  that  the  child  was  battling  most 
manfully  with  his  own  tyrannical  disposition,  and  to  the 
general  dislike  succeeded  an  admiration  quite  as  general. 
He  was  seen,  before  each  recitation-hour  and  each  recre¬ 
ation,  to  visit  the  Chapel  and  make  a  short  and  fervent 
prayer  for  increased  strength  to  overcome  himself.  There 
was  no  affectation  in  the  boy’ s  piety.  He  w^as  simple  and 
straightforward  in  everything.  His  indomitable  courage 
saved  him  from  the  temptation  to  as  well  as  from  the  sus¬ 
picion  of  hypocrisy. 

The  months  preparatory  to  the  day  for  first  Commu¬ 
nion  soon  passed.  Charles,  of  course,  was  admitted,  to  the 
intense  satisfaction  of  the  whole  school.  His  delighted 
parents  had  come  to  be  present  at  the  festival,  and  knelt 
beside  their  child  at  the  altar.  A  happier  mother  could 
scarce  be  found  on  earth  that  day.  Her  face  glowed  like 
that  of  an  angel  as  she  received  the  Divine  Gift,  and  tears 
of  ineffable  sweetness  bedewed  her  cheeks  ;  nor  was  her 
boy  less  angelic  in  his  rapt  air  and  with  his  lively  faith  in 
the  Great  Presence. 

It  was  a  day  long  afterward  remembered  in  the  school. 
The  happy  parents  asked  and  obtained  permission  to  take 
their  darling  home  for  one  week’ s  rest.  The  weather  was 
intensely  cold,  though  in  the  first  days  of  April.  The  boy 
caught  cold  on  the  way,  and  was  laid  up  with  pneumonia, 
which  carried  him  away  in  a  few  days,  preternaturally 
happy  to  die  in  his  recovered  innocence. 

From  the  first  appearance  of  serious  symptoms,  his  mo¬ 
ther  felt  instinctively  that  the  seal  of  death  was  on  him, 


TEE  WILLING  SACRIFICE. 


319 


and  that  the  prayer  she  had  made  in  bringing  him  back  to 
school,  had  been  answered  most  mercifully.  She  watched 
unweariedly  near  his  bedside  till  the  pure  spirit  had  lied, 
and  then  lifting  him  up  in  presence  of  the  weeping  family 
and  with  the  aid  of  the  noble  father,  who  at  once  under¬ 
stood  what  she  would  do,  she  offered  him  a  willing  sacrifice 
to  the  God  of  Angels.  “Thou  gavest  him  to  us,  O  Father,” 
she  said  ;  “Thou  hast  most  lovingly  prepared  him  for  Thy¬ 
self  ;  accept  him  as  a  thanksgiving  offering  from  the  grate¬ 
ful  hearts  of  his  father  and  mother.” 

Well  might  the  afflicted  father  often  repeat  the  beautiful 
lines  of  a  modern  singer,  as  he  remembered  the  bright  close 
of  that  short  life  : 

“  Tliou  wert  a  vision  of  delight,  to  bless  us  given  ; 

Beauty  embodied  to  our  sight,  a  type  of  heaven  : 

So  dear  to  us  thou  wert,  thou  art 
Even  less  thine  ownself  than  a  part 
Of  mine  and  of  thy  mother’s  heart.  .  .  . 

Even  to  the  last  thy  every  word — to  glad,  to  grieve — 

Was  sweet  as  sweetest  song  of  bird  on  summer’s  eve  : 

In  outward  beauty  undecayed. 

Death  o’er  thy  spirit  cast  no  shade. 

And  like  the  rainbow  thou  didst  fade.”  * 

*  David  Macbeth  Moir. 


V 


CHAPTER  XVI. 


MATRIMONY. 

In  tlie  early  education  of  youth,  women  were  represented  as  the  objects  of 
respectful  love,  and  the  dispensers  of  happiness.  The  child  was  taught  that, 
to  be  an  honorable  and  happy  man,  he  should  prove  himself  worthy  of  the  love 
of  a  virtuous  woman.  This  lesson  (says  Uhlrich  von  Lichtenstein)  every  boy 
sucked  in  with  his  mother’s  milk ;  so  it  was  not  wonderful  that  love  and  honor 
should  become  identified  in  his  soul.  When  I  icas  a  child  so  young  that  I  used  to 
ride  upon  a  stick,  I  was  fully  persuaded  that  I  ought  to  honor  women  with  all  that 
I  possessed, — love,  goods ,  courage,  and  life. — Kenelm  Henry  Digby.  ' 

She  was  high-minded  in  nothing  but  in  aspiring  to  perfection,  and  in  the 
disdain  of  vice  :  in  other  things  covering  her  greatness  with  humility  among 
her  inferiors,  and  showing  it  with  courtesy  among  her  peers. — Robert  South 
well,  S.  J.  (The  Martyr). 

We  are  writing  for  men  of  the  world,  advising  them  how 
to  be  good  among  the  bad,  and  best  among  the  good  ;  lead¬ 
ing  them  by  pleasant  and  devious  paths  to  the  contempla¬ 
tion  of  soul-stirring  models  of  all  human  excellence and 
teaching  where  to  find  both  true  happiness  and  the  surest 
means  of  attaining  it. 

One  chief  service  that,  as  teacher  and  guide,  we  can 
render  the  young  man  about  to  enter  upon  the  battle  of 
life, — is  to  direct  him  in  finding  the  woman  whom  God  has 
chosen  for  him,  to  be  his  life-companion,  his  most  faithful 
friend,  his  stay  and  counselor, — the  joy  of.  his  heart,  the 
queen  and  the  light  of  his  home.  True  Christian  men, 
men  who  have  had  experience  of  life’s  bliss  and  life’s  bit¬ 
terest  sorrows,  of  its  difficulties  and  disappointments,  its 
disasters  and  its  triumphs, — of  all  the  sweets  of  a  home 
made  bright  and  sunny  and  blissful,  or  of  a  home  made 
dark  and  dreary  and  desolate, — will  say,  on  reading  the 
title  of  this  chapter,  that  its  subject-matter  is  the  most  im- 

320 


TEE  CENTRAL  SUBJECT  OF  THIS  BOOK. 


321 


portant  in  this  book.  They  will  also  say,  that  a  priest’s 
hand  alone  can  trace  ont  the  rules  which  should  guide 
pure-hearted  youth  in  finding  the  worthy  object  of  love, 
and  point  out  the  conditions  on  which  the  divine  blessing 
secures  to  spotless  mutual  loye  all  the  felicities  of  this  life 
and  the  next. 

With  such  a  purpose,  and  cherishing  the  hope  that  He 
for  whose  glory  we  labor,  will  enable  us  to  write  what  is 
apposite  to  our  purpose,  we  approach  this  portion  of  our 
appointed  task. 

Chrisf  s  First  Miracle  wrought  to  Honor  Matrimony . 

Has  it  ever  struck  you,  dear  reader,  that  the  first  graceful 
act  recorded  of  the  Lord,  after  he  had  quitted  the  privacy 
of  his  mother’s  home  at  Nazareth,  had  been  publicly  bap¬ 
tized  in  the  Jordan,  and  had  spent  in  the  wilderness  the 
“  forty  days”  so  full  of  heroic  abstinence  and  uninter¬ 
rupted  prayer, — was  to  go  with  his  Blessed  Mother  and 
his  disciples  to  the  marriage-feast  at  Cana,  a  little  town 
quite  near  Nazareth?  His  first  stupendous  miracle, — the 
changing  of  the  water  into  wine, — was  performed  there,  at 
the  instance  of  that  same  Mother. 

So,  she  who  was  the  Mother  of  the  New  Life,  the  parent 
of  that  regenerated  humanity  out  of  which  Christ’s  Bride, 
the  Church  immortal  and  unfailing,  was  to  be  formed,  and 
He  the  Bridegroom,  the  abiding  Love  and  Worship  of  re¬ 
deemed  humanity,  were  both  present  at  that  marriage-feast. 
It  was  fitting  that  she,  the  Eve  of  the  new  creation,  should 
urge  the  Second  Adam  to  give  a  new  wine  to  the  hosts  and 
their  guests.  For  was  it  not  from  the  hearts  of  both  these 
true  Parents  of  our  race,  that  flowed  the  Blood  given  as  the 
price  of  our  redemption,  and  applied  in  the  Sacraments  as 
the  sole  means  of  our  sanctification  ? 

The  Model  of  Wedded  Lore. 

These  Two,  who  loved  each  other  as  Mother  and  Son  had 
never  loved  before,  and  who  loved  us  with  an  utter  love, 
21 


322 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


were  united  in  that  great  sacrificial  oblation,  which  re¬ 
paired  the  world  ;  the  Son  giving  Himself  for  our  ransom, 
and  the  Mother  giving  herself  in  and  with  her  Son,  as  she 
stood  sublime  and  unshrinking  beneath  that  Tree  of  Life. 
There  must  be,  eternally,  the  exemplar  of  true  love.  For 
love  is  the  gift  of  self ;  and  these  Parents  of  our  souls, 
loving  us  truly,  loved  us  utterly,  giving  themselves  to  death 
and  shame  and  suffering  unutterable,  that  we  might  live. 

And  so  the  new  wine  of  Cana  was  the  fit  emblem  of  that 
sanctifying  blood,  of  that  all  -  powerful  grace  of  Christ, 
which  was  to  hallow  anew  the  most  ancient  of  God’s  or¬ 
dinances,  the  matrimonial  union.  By  the  blood  of  Christ 
was  the  mutual  love  of  husband  and  wife  to  be  consecrated, 
and  the  whole  stream  of  human  existence  to  be  purified.  In 
that  love  of  Mother  and  Son,  as  afterward  in  the  love  of 
Christ  for  his  Church  and  of  the  Church  for  Him,  were  all 
the  children  of  both  to  find  the  model  of  chaste  love. 

Hence  it  is  that  he  could  say  to  his  own,  a  few  hours  be¬ 
fore  he  gave  himself  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies  :  “  This 
is  My  Commandment,  that  you  love  one  another,  as  I  have 
loved  you.  Greater  love  than  this  no  man  hath,  that  a  man 
lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends.”  * 

If  such  be  the  divine  model  according  to  which  we  the 
children  of  the  Crucified  have  to  practice  toward  each  other, 
in  the  intercourse  of  social  life,  all  true  love,  all  love  that 
God  may  bless, — how  much  more  is  that  special  love  which 
two  souls  who  give  themselves  each  to  the  other  for  the  holy 
and  difficult  companionship  of  a  life-long  existence,  to  be 
molded  on  this  eternal  pattern  of  self-sacrificing  charity ! 

Hence,  also,  is  it  that  Christ’s  great  Apostle  has  written 
this  complementary  commandment :  “  Husbands,  love  your 
wives,  as  Christ  also  loved  the  church,  and  delivered  him¬ 
self  up  for  it,  that  he  might  sanctify  it.”f 

Seek  for  your  Bride  the  Purest  and  the  Best . 

It/s  the  dearest  interest  of  every  young  man  seeking  a 


*  St.  John,  xv.  12,  13. 


\  Ephesians,  v. 


WEDDED  LOVE  MUST  BE  SELF  SACRIFICING. 


323 


companion,  who  is  to  be  snn  of  his  life,  the  honor  and 
treasure  of  his  home,  that  he  should  find  the  best,  the 
purest,  the  most  worthy  in  every  way  of  the  devotion  of  a 
whole  lifetime,  and  that,  having  found  her,  he  should  not 
only  keep  her  pure,  stainless,  and  worthy  of  all  love  and 
honor,  but  that  every  day  of  his  life  he  should  labor  to 
make  her  more  so,  and  be  himself  before  her  eyes  the  liv¬ 
ing  and  ever-present  copy  of  Christ’s  goodness  and  devo¬ 
tion. 

The  ideal  of  female  loveliness,  which  is  familiar  to  all 
pure  Christian  minds,  is  not  so  much  one  of  bodily  beauty 
as  of  that  spiritual  grace  and  attractiveness  that  arise  from 
maturity  of  virtue  superadded  to  baptismal  innocence  un¬ 
defiled.  It  is  extraordinary  how  deeply  and  widely  the 
Lives  of  the  Saints,  the  sweetness  of  woman’s  countenance 
in  every  Christian  home,  and  the  representations  of  Chris¬ 
tian  painting  and  sculpture  even  in  the  rudest  periods  of 
mediaeval  art,  had  impressed  on  the  mind  of  Christendom 
the  image  of  supernatural  beauty. 

Dante’s  portraitures,  so  heavenly  in  their  grace  and  ma¬ 
jesty,  were  exact  pictures  of  living  women  he  had  seen  in 
Italy,  in  his  own  native  Florence.  At  the  distance  of  six 
centuries,  Tennyson  only  reproduces  the  ideal  of  Dante ; 
for  it  existed  in  England  as  well  as  in  Italy  in  the  thirteenth 
and  fourteenth  centuries  ;  and,  through  God’s  good  provi¬ 
dence,  it  is  still  preserved  in  both  countries  in  the  lives  and 
homes  of  millions. 

Was  it  Isabella- the-Catholic,  the  worthy  descendant  of 
Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  that  the  great  modern  poet  had  in 
his  mind’ s  eye  when  he  drew  the  following  likeness  ? 


**  Eyes  not  down-dropped  nor  over  bright,  but  fed 
With  the  clear-pointed  flame  of  chastity. 

Clear  without  heat,  undying,  tended  by 

Pure  vestal  thoughts  in  the  translucent  fane 
Of  her  still  spirit,  locks  not  wide-dispread 
Madonna- wise  on  either  side  her  head  ; 
Sweet  lips  whereon  perpetually  did  reign 
The  summer  calm  of  golden  charity, 


324 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Were  fixed  shadows  of  tliy  fixed  mood 
Revered  Isabel,  the  crown  and  head. 

The  stately  flower  of  female  fortitude, 

Of  perfect  wifehood  and  pure  lowlihead. 

*'  The  intuitive  decision  of  a  bright 

And  thorough-edged  intellect  to  part 

Error  from  crime  ;  a  prudence  to  withhold  ; 

The  laws  of  marriage  charactered  in  gold 
Upon  the  blanched  tablets  of  her  heart ; 

A  love  still  burning  upward,  givinglight 
To  read  these  laws  ;  an  accent  very  low 
In  blandishment,  but  a  most  silver  flow 
Of  subtile-graced  counsel  in  distress. 

Right  to«the  heart  and  brain,  tlio’  undescried. 

Winning  its  way  with  extreme  gentleness 
Through  all  the  outworks  of  suspicious  pride  ; 

A  courage  to  endure  and  to  obey, 

A  hate  of  gossip  parlance,  and  of  sway. 

Crowned  Isabel,  tliro’  all  her  placid  life. 

The  queen  of  marriage,  a  most  perfect  wife.” 

Wherever  a  Catholic  mother, — even  in  the  lowliest  con¬ 
dition  of  life, — is  faithful  to  her  conscience  and  observant 
of  the  rules  of  her  Religion  in  all  that  concerns  the  educa¬ 
tion  of  her  daughters,  there  is  little  danger  of  having  these 
grow  up  to  anything  but  a  most  pure  and  lovely  maiden¬ 
hood.  We  have  before  us  now  families  buried  amid  the 
squalor  of  these  groups  of  “ shanties”  which  cover  the 
most  uninviting  portions  of  Manhattan  Island,  and  in  these 
to  all  appearance  most  wretched  abodes  are  to  be  found  the 
loveliest  types  of  female  innocence  and  beauty.  Fathers 
and  mothers  are  there  who  prefer  the  comparative  isolation 
and  greater  domestic  privacy  of  these  cabins,  because  they 
can  there  preserve  their  dear  ones  from  the  contamination 
of  a  more  crowded  neighborhood  and  the  dangers  of  swarm¬ 
ing  tenement-houses.  In  very  truth,  there  are  families  who 
thus  cluster  together  on  the  barren  rocks  or  in  the  fever¬ 
generating  swamps  of  Harlem,  because  they  thus  can  form 
associations  of  neighborhood  that  remind  them  of  the  vil¬ 
lage  community  of  the  far-away  fatherland. 

Whether  in  the  cabin,  therefore,  or  in  the  palace,  it 


SEEK  FIRST  THE  BEAUTIFUL  SOUL. 


325 


depends  upon  the  mother’ s  training,  watchfulness,  and  ex¬ 
ample,  that  her  girl  shall  be  or  not  an  angel  on  earth,  a 
beautiful  soul  shedding  around  the  light  of  heaven  and  the 
perfume  of  paradise. 

Be  it  your  first  and  chief  care  to  seek  the  beautiful  soul 
much  more  than  the  beautiful  body.  There  are  comely 
and  attractive  women,  who  resemble  exquisite  vases  of  rich 
material  and  most  classic  form,  but  tilled  with  a  poisonous 
or  loathsome  liquor  :  woe  to  the  imprudent  man  who  should 
taste  of  the  foul  contents !  The  beautiful  soul  is  a  treasure 
beyond  all  price,  placed  sometimes  in  a  homely  vessel  of 
unrefined  material  or  rude  workmanship,  but  whose  value 
is  altogether  independent  of  either  form  or  material.  It  is 
the  most  exquisite  of  perfumes  given  forth  by  the  least 
brilliant  of  flowers ;  the  water  of  life,  of  delight,  and  im¬ 
mortality,  often  gushing  forth  from  a  spring  in  some  ob¬ 
scure  or  barren  vale,  or  as  often  placed  by  the  hand  of  the 
Creator  in  the  lowliest  and  homeliest  of  vessels. 

Young  men  who  are  themselves  pure  of  heart  will  surely 
be  directed  by  the  secret  and  irresistible  charm  of  true  good¬ 
ness  toward  a  maidenly  heart  worthy  of  their  affections. 

That  is  the  one  supremely  precious  quality  which  a  young 
man  must  find  in  the  companion  he  would  choose  for  life. 
There  can  be  no  love  without  it.  For  love  is  founded  on 
esteem,  and  esteem  can  only  rest  on  the  certainty  of  inno¬ 
cence  in  the  beloved  object.  One  cannot  love  what  one 
does  not  respect ;  but  how  can  a  young  and  pure  heart  re¬ 
spect  a  woman, — though  divinely  fair, — from  whom  the 
charm,  the  freshness,  the  fragrance  of  purity  have  departed, 
— like  a  beautiful  flower  rifled  of  its  sweets  and  containing 
only  the  putrid  corpses  of  the  insects  that  have  preyed 
upon  it  ? 

Be  slow,  therefore,  in  judging  for  yourself,  even  where, 
with  the  charm  of  personal  beauty,  you  have  found  in  a 
girl  the  outward  signs  of  maidenly  modesty.  There  is  One 
who  reads  the  heart  and  who  will  surely  guide  you  in  your 
choice,  if  you  are  only  careful  to  consult  His  pleasure, 
much  more  than  the  inclination  begotten  by  a  fair  face,  a 


326 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


graceful  person,  and  a  modest  bearing.  It  is  all-important 
to  you  tliat  you  should  be  master  of  your  own  soul  at  this 
juncture,  when  a  hasty  choice  might  be  a  wrong  choice, 
and  when  a  wrong  choice  would  make  shipwreck  of  your 
whole  future  life.  Lift  up  your  soul  to  Him  who  is  bound 
not  to  fail  those  who  seek  His  light  and  strength  in  a  choice 
so  momentous. 

There  are  other  qualities  beside  maidenly  innocence,  even 
when  it  embellishes  the  highest  beauty  of  form.  We  would 
say  to  you, — whether  you  be  a  prince  or  a  peasant,  the 
wealthiest  of  men  or  the  poorest,  depending  only  on  your 
stout  heart  and  strong  arms, — Let  the  woman  you  -would 
make  your  wife,  come  from  a  well-regulated  home ,  lohere 
the  womanly  virtues  are  caref  ully  cultivated  Such  homes 
are  to  be  found  in  every  class  of  society. 

Though  you  feel  drawn  toward  a  maiden  by  the  twofold 
attraction  of  beauty  and  apparent  modesty  and  innocence, 
show  not  your  interest,  and  give  not  your  heart  away,  till 
you  know  more.  Watch  how  she  bears  herself  under  the 
trials  of  home-life  ;  what  respect  she  shows  for  her  parents, 
what  sympathy  toward  the  suffering ;  make  sure  that  she 
is  unselfish  in  all  her  conduct  toward  others,  and  especially 
in  her  sisterly  devotion  toward  her  younger  brothers  and 
sisters. 

She  who  is  ever  mindful  of  the  wants,  the  comforts,  and 
haj)piness  of  others,  and  forgetful  only  of  herself ;  who 
manifests  that  motherly  devotion  toward  the  younger  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  household,  and  tenderness  toward  every  form  of 
suffering, — will  be  sure  to  bring  to  your  home  the  same 
wifely  and  motherly  qualities.  She  will  make  the  happi¬ 
ness  of  your  life. 

To  learn  what  she  really  is,  be  not  content  with  an  ac¬ 
quaintance  formed  in  the  ball-room,  or  amid  the  crowd  and 
glitter  of  a  watering-place.  Study  her  in  her  home-life. 
You  need  a  wife  who  is  to  be  your  life-long  companion, 
your  most  constant  and  trusted  friend,  your  wisest  and 
most  disinterested  counselor  ;  the  dear  sharer  of  all  your 
holiest  joys  and  deepest  convictions  ;  the  mother  and  edu- 


THE  DOWRY  YOUR  WIFE  SHOULD  BRING  YOU  327 


cator  of  your  children, — fitted  by  her  enlightenment  and 
solid  piety,  to  bring  the  religion  of  your  fathers  home  to 
their  minds  and  their  hearts, — who  will  not  be  satisfied  with 
teaching  them  the  great  truths  of  Revelation,  but  show  them 
these  truths  practiced  and  made  lovely  in  her  own  daily 
life  ;  the  prudent  governor  of  your  household,  careful  of 
every  detail  of  domestic  economy,  knowing  how  to  make 
her  servants  obey  and  work  by  love,  charitable  toward  the 
poor,  hospitable  toward  all,  lovely  and  venerable  in  the  eyes 
of  your  friends,  your  relatives,  and  acquaintance. 

Together  with  innocence  of  life,  solid  piety,  a  good  prac¬ 
tical  education,  and  the  wifely  and  motherly  qualities  enu¬ 
merated  above, — is  needed  that  sound  sense,  without  which 
the  most  brilliant  accomplishments  only  serve  to  make  a 
young  woman  vain,  idle,  unreliable,  and  dangerous. 

We  have  not  mentioned  truthfulness,  because  we  suppose 
that  there  can  be  no  true  piety  without  it.  We  say  to  young 
men,  Never  give  your  heart  or  your  hand  to  a  woman  who  is 
capable  of  falsehood;  just  as  we  should  say  to  a  young 
woman,  Never  accept  the  love  or  the  friendship  of  a  man 
whom  you  know  to  be  addicted  or  inclined  to  intemperance. 

In  mentioning  piety, — the  enlightened  and  hearty  practice 
of  your  own  faith,  — as  an  indispensable  quality  in  the  wife 
of  your  choice,  we  have  sufficiently  warned  you  against  ir¬ 
religious  women,  the  worst  curse  of  domestic  life  or  public 
society. 

Such,  then,  are  the  women — to  omit  the  mention  of  other 
qualities,  kindred  to  those  which  we  have  described, — who 
are  alone  worthy  of  a  true  man’s  love.  They  are  the  true 
women.  Should  Providence  guide  you  to  the  possession  of 
such,  then  are  you  most  blessed.  Your  parents  can  give 
you  education,  position,  wealth,  an  honored  name  and 
home ;  society  may  bestow  honor  and  trust ;  but  far  above 
all  that  parents  can  bequeath  and  society  can  confer  of 
what  is  conducive  to  happiness  and  honor,  is  a  true  woman, 
given  to  a  man’s  heart  by  Him  who  knows  the  heart’s  needs, 
and  wherein  consist  the  felicity  of  a  man’ s  household  and 
the  glory  of  his  life. 


328 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


How  to  be  Worthy  of  a  True  Woman. 

But  liow  are  you  to  make  yourself  worthy  of  such  a  Gocl- 
sent  love  %  How  are  you  to  guard  and  cherish  the  treasure 
of  a  noble  woman’s  heart  \  This  is  a  most  vital  question. 

Men  are  but  too  apt  to  think, — or  to  conduct  themselves 
as  if  they  thought, — that  they  had  a  right  to  expect  a  wife 
to  bring  them  not  only  accomplishments  and  graces  far 
superior  to  their  own,  but  a  soul  unstained  by  sin,  and  a 
heart  untouched  by  any  other  love.  There  are  men, — very 
young  men  too, — who  only  think  of  the  sacred  and  awful 
responsibilities  of  matrimony,  when  they  have  wasted  their 
life  on  the  worst  pursuits  and  profaned  their  affections  by 
the  most  criminal  indulgence,  and  who  believe  that  they 
honor  a  pure  woman  by  offering  her  in  exchange  for  the 
untouched  and  boundless  wealth  of  her  maidenly  love,  a 
heart  utterly  incapable  of  feeling,  and  a  soul  incapable  of 
understanding,  what  love  is. 

It  is,  we  fear,  but  a  too  frequent  occurrence,  that  a  bride¬ 
groom  should  bring  to  the  matrimonial  altar,  manhood 
without  the  freshness,  the  innocence,  and  the  vigor  of 
youth,  wealth  without  religion  or  piety  or  virtue,  position 
without  the  honor  and  integrity  which  can  alone  adorn  it, 
— while  he  expects  and  demands  that  the  bride  shall  be  as 
fair,  as  pure,  as  excelling  in  all  natural  and  supernatural 
grace  as  Eve  coming  in  her  perfect  womanhood  from  the 
hand  of  God.  But  we  pause  here,  and  leave  what  else 
might  be  said  to  the  reflections  of  all  good  men. 

You  are,  therefore,  to  be  most  earnest  in  keeping  or  in 
making  yourself  worthy,  in  the  sight  of  the  all- judging 
God,  of  the  true  love  you  are  in  quest  of.  A  virginal  heart 
with  its  perennial  flow  of  deep,  chaste,  elevating  love,  is  not 
unlike  the  San-Graal  of  our  ancient  Christian  chivalry. 
Only  the  knight  who  had  never  stained  his  baptismal  puri¬ 
ty,  or  who  had  recovered  his  innocence  by  dint  of  heroic 
expiation,  could  possess  or  even  behold  from  afar  the  sacred 
vessel  in  which  had  flowed  the  blood  of  the  Lord.  Even  so, 
in  those  who  seek  the  treasure  of  a  pure  womanly  heart, — it 


SANCTIFY  YOUR  SOUL. 


329 


is  required  that  they  should  themselves  be  pure  in  order  to 
appreciate  it  and  to  cherish  its  possession  as  dearer  than 
life  itself. 

The  holy  flame  and  mighty  power  of  true  love  which  God 
the  Creator  would  place  in  wedded  hearts,  is  a  something 
so  divine,  that  he  would  have  both  man  and  maiden  purify 
and  prepare  their  souls  by  the  two  great  Sacraments  intend¬ 
ed  to  bestow  holiness  where  it  is  not  and  to  increase  it  still 
more  where  it  is.  This  wedded  love  and  the  special  grace 
brought  to  the  souls  of  worthy  bride  and  bridegroom  by 
that  other  Great  Sacrament  of  Matrimony, — are  the  well- 
spring  of  all  human  happiness,  the  principle  of  domestic 
bliss, — the  heart  and  center  of  all  fatherly  and  motherly 
goodness.  We  know  not  how  to  convey  the  truth  which  is 
here  before  us, — and  on  which  depends  the  existence  of  the 
Christian  family  and  of  human  civilization  itself. 

Unspealcable  Importance  of  the  Sacrament  of  Matrimony 

received  with  Reverence. 

The  sacrament  of  Matrimony  received  with  the  deep  rev¬ 
erence  which  its  sanctity  demands,  is  the  consecration  of 
human  love  in  its  highest  form  save  one,  that  by  which  the 
heart  dedicates  its  affections  to  God,  to  a  life  of  contempla¬ 
tion,  prayer  and  praise,  or  to  the  active  service  of  Religion 
and  Charity.  We  are,  however,  at  present  concerned  with 
the  no  less  vital  subject  of  hallowed  wedded  love. 

We  would  fain  impress  upon  the  minds  of  parents  and 
of  their  marriageable  sons  and  daughters,  the  necessity  of 
treating  this  great  sacrament  of  matrimony  with  the  re¬ 
spect  which  is  due  to  the  most  ancient  ordinance  of  religion, 
which  Christ  so  reverenced  that  He  would  have  his  own 
union  with  the  Church  serve  as  a  model  for  the  contract  or 
covenant  by  which  bride  and  bridegroom  pledge  themselves 
mutually  to  life-long  devotion  and  self-sacrifice ;  and  His 
own  sacred  love  for  the  Church  become  the  type  of  the  in¬ 
comparable  and  surpassing  love  which  a  true  husband  is  to 
cherish  toward  his  companion. 


330 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


We  would  also  impress  tliis  truth  on  those  who  are  the 
teachers  and  guides  of  the  Christian  people.  When  they 
see,  every  day,  human  legislators  casting  aside,  as  useless  or 
as  restraints  to  individual  right  or  civil  authority,  the  sacred 
and  time-honored  marriage  laws  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
and  when  non-Catholic  denominations  either  concur  with 
the  civil  magistrate  in  denying  all  sacramental  character  to 
the  matrimonial  rite,  or  strike  at  Christ’s  own  legislation  by 
countenancing  or  authorizing  divorce, — it  is  high  time  that 
we  should  strengthen  within  our  hearts  and  our  homes  the 
faith  in  the  unity  and  divinity  of  Matrimony. 

All  possible  persuasion  should  be  used  to  make  young 
people  prepare  their  souls  for  this  central  act  in  their  lives ; 
and,  therefore,  all  care  should  be  taken  to  instruct  both  in 
public  and  in  private,  the  faithful  people  on  the  nature  of 
this  sacrament,  on  the  countless  and  priceless  graces  laid 
in  store  by  God’ s  fatherly  providence  in  behalf  of  all  who 
approach  it  reverently  and  worthily,  and  on  the  fatal  and 
irreparable  consequences  of  a  marriage  contracted  without 
due  deliberation  or  preparation. 

All  possible  solemnity  should  be  given  to  the  marriage 
service.  When  we  say  “  service,”  we  do  not  mean  the 
nuptial  benediction  given  either  in  the  church  or  elsewhere, 

without  mass  :  but  we  mean  the  whole  divine  function  as 

✓ 

set  forth  in  the  Ritual,  the  nuptial  benediction  in  the  morn¬ 
ing  before  God’s  altar,  and  followed  immediately  by  the 
Nuptial  Mass.  The  two  together, — the  sacrament  and  the 
sacrifice,  the  contract  with  the  priest’s  blessing,  and  the 
oblation  of  the  Divine  Victim  of  Calvary,  to  call  down  all 
the  graces  and  joys  of  Heaven  on  the  union  of  two  pure 
Christian  hearts, — this  alone  is  the  Marriage  Service. 

Magnificent  Ritual  of  the  Nuptial  Mass. 

It  is  impossible  to  reflect  seriously  on  the  reality  as  we 
here  present  it,  and  impossible  to  read  the  sublime  Nuptial 
Mass  with  the  grand  blessing  after  the  Pater  Noster ,  with¬ 
out  feeling  how  solemn,  how  awful,  and  yet  how  joyous  is 


THE  TRUE  NUPTIAL  SERVICE. 


331 


this  august  function  of  the  Church  of  our  fathers.  Is  it  not, 
therefore,  sad, — nay,  most  deplorable, — to  see  it  curtailed 
and  degraded  by  the  want  of  faith  and  want  of  reverence  of 
so  many  Catholics,  who  make  of  the  celebration  of  matri¬ 
mony  only  a  profane  and  empty  form,  into  which  no  reli¬ 
gious  thought  is  allowed  to  enter  ? 

“One  of  the  most  bitter  griefs  which  God’s  ministers 
have  to  endure,  is  to  be  forced  to  witness  or  bless  the  union 
of  persons  who  contract  matrimony  without  being  seem¬ 
ingly  conscious  of  the  sacredness  of  the  rite,  of  the  pure 
dispositions  they  are  bound  to  bring  to  it,  of  the  priceless 
graces  attached  to  it,  or  of  the  terrible  consequences  of  its 
profanation.”  * 

To  be  sure,  the  marriage  contract,  for  its  validity  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Church,  needs  only  the  presence  of  her  author¬ 
ized  minister  and  that  the  contracting  parties  be  perfectly 
free  according  to  her  laws.  But  what  may  satisfy  the 
nude  letter  of  the  law  ought  not  to  satisfy  the  conscience 
of  parents  who  fear  God  and  of  children  brought  up  in  His 
fear. 

A  marriage  ceremony  performed  in  the  Church,  at  even, 
ing,  with  no  matter  what  pomp,  is  not  the  marriage  service 
as  Catholics  understand  it.  The  altar  may  be  aflame  with 
lights  and  decked  out  with  the  loveliest  flowers  of  spring  ; 
the  organ  may  give  forth  the  most  triumphant  of  “  Wedding 
Marches;”  and  the  edifice  itself  be  crowded  with  sympa¬ 
thetic  friends  or  a  throng  of  curious,  idle  sight-seers.  All 
that  is  not  the  divinely  beautiful  Nuptial  Mass, — the  real 
marriage  service  performed  at  morning-tide  ;  the  prayerful 
assemblage  of  relatives  and  friends  assembled  round  the 
altar  on  which  He  is  present  who  klied  to  win  to  Himself  a 
spotless  and  immortal  bride  in  our  Mother  the  Church  ;  the 
young  lovers  bringing  to  His  feet  their  sinless  hearts,  that 
by  His  blessing  their  God-given  love  may  be  hallowed,  deep¬ 
ened  and  elevated,  and  confirmed  forever  ;  and  then  the 
oblation  of  the  unbloody  sacrifice  which  commemorates  and 


*  “  The  Golden  Treasury  of  Prayer,”  p.  429. 


I 


I 


332 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


continues  that  of  Calvary,  the  sublime  and  prophetic  bene¬ 
diction  of  the  Propitiare ,  uttered  on  these  wedded  souls 
before  the  Holy  Communion  ; — the  whole  crowned  by  their 
partaking  together  of  that  Bread  which  is  the  figure,  fore¬ 
taste,  and  pledge  of  the  eternal  possession  ; — this,  and  this 
only,  is  the  Marriage  Service  of  the  Catholic  Church, — a 
rite  appealing  to  all  the  most  sublime  beliefs,  and  stirring 
the  Christian  heart  to  its  inmost  depths. 

Yes,  everything  in  the  Catholic  doctrine  and  practice 
impresses  on  the  souls  of  the  young,  that  the  love  which 
God  hallows  is  a  gift  above  all  price,  which  can  only  be 
worthily  received  in  a  sinless  heart,  and  which  it  must  be 
the  study  and  labor  of  a  lifetime  to  cherish  and  to  increase. 

True  Lore  ever  Reverent. 

On  this  last  thought, — the  duty  and  the  necessity  of 
guarding,  cherishing,  and  increasing  this  blessed  mutual 
affection, — we  must  insist  a  little  further. 

True  love, — that  is,  God-given  love, — fills  the  soul  with 
infinite  reverence  for  the  loved  object, — else  it  will  forth¬ 
with  degenerate  into  lust,  which  is  the  death  of  love  and  of 
respect.  We  cannot  imagine  the  young  Tobias  and  his 
bride  ever  losing  for  each  other  a  particle  of  that  holy  re¬ 
spect  and  tender  regard  which  God  had  planted  in  their 
souls.  Even  when  the  Archangel  who  had  been  sent  to 
preside  over  their  union,  had  withdrawn  his  visible  pres¬ 
ence,  his  counsels,  and  his  protection,  we  cannot  help  fol¬ 
lowing  the  saintly  exiles  all  through  their  life- journey  as 
walking  ever  hand  in  hand  beneath  the  all-seeing  Eye,  and 
encouraging  each  other  to  be  daily  and  hourly  more  worthy 
of  Him  in  inward  thought  and  outward  deed. 

Such  were  also  Malcolm  Canmore  and  his  sainted  wife, 
Margaret,  whose  ardent  love  deepened  and  grew  with  every 
successive  year, — the  soldier-king  becoming  evermore  pene¬ 
trated  with  reverence,  gentleness  and  tenderness  in  presence 
of  his  lovely  wife,  whom  he  could  not  think  of  without 
tears,  without  wondering  how  such  an  angel  was  given  to 


BAD  WIVES  AND  TBUE  WIVES. 


333 


him  to  love  and  keep.  The  very  prayer-books  she  nsed 
were  to  him  a  something  holy,  which  he  would  allow  no  one 
to  carry  but  himself,  kissing  them  devoutly  as  he  gave  them 
to  her  or  received  them  from  her,  in  presence  of  his  rude 
Scottish  chieftains,  and  till  his  dying  day  demeaning  him¬ 
self  in  public  and  in  private,  toward  his  spotless  queen,  as 
if  he  were  her  servant  and  bond-slave.  How  she  must  have 
loved  him  all  the  while, — how  truly,  how  tenderly, — that 
she  could  thus  inspire  him  with  a  devotion  that  never  de¬ 
creased  and  a  reverence  which  ever  grew  with  age  ! 

So  was  it  with  another  king, — a  king  too  of  the  same 
old  Gaelic  race, — though  separated  from  Scotland  by  a 
narrow  sea, — Brian,  King  of  Ireland.  He  is  called  the 
most  kind-hearted  of  men  by  the  author  of  the  Mals- Saga, 
and  regarded  by  the  Horsemen  of  that  and  succeeding  ages 
as  the  champion  of  the  Christian  faith  against  Scandina¬ 
vian  idolatry  and  barbarism,  perishing  like  a  martyr  on 
Good  Friday  (April  18),  1014,  because  he  would  not  himself 
draw  the  sword,  shed  blood,  or  defend  his  own  life  on  the 
day  when  Christ  died  for  us, — though  he  directed  the  battle 
against  the  enemies  of  his  country  and  his  faith.  The  Saga 
mentions  his  first  wife,  Kormlada,  an  inveterate  heathen, 
put  away  by  him,  doubtless,  because  of  her  utter  wicked¬ 
ness  and  sorcery.  “She  was  the  fairest  of  all  women,  and 
the  best  gifted  in  everything  that  was  not  in  her  own  power, 
but  it  was  the  talk  of  men  that  she  did  all  things  ill  over 
which  she  had  any  power.  ”*  That  is,  she  coveted  and  pos¬ 
sessed  all  the  forbidden  secrets  of  magic,  and  made  the 
very  worst  use  of  her  own  splendid  abilities.  “Kormlada 
was  not  the  mother  of  King  Brian’s  children,  and  so  grim 
was  she  against  King  Brian  after  their  parting  that  she 
would  gladly  have  him  dead.”f 

This  fury,  if  she  did  not  cause  the  successful  invasion  of 
Ireland  by  the  Vikings,  was  most  certainly  the  soul  of  the 
mighty  league  formed  against  Brian  and  the  Christians  by 
the  Horsemen,  and  in  which  the  heroic  old  man  lost  his  life. 

*  Nials-Saya,.  or  “The  Story  of  the  Burnt  Nial,”  Dasent’s  translation,  vol. 
ii.,  p.  323.  t  Ibidem,  p.  324. 


334 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Far  different  must  have  been  Brian’s  Christian  wife,  the 
mother  of  the  three  brave  sons  who  fonght  with  their  father 
on  that  memorable  day, — and  the  youngest  of  whom  was 
miraculously  cured  by  the  blood  which  spurted  from  his 
father’ s  death-wound.  * 

It  was  an  age, — no  matter  what  modern  fanatics  may 
affirm  to  the  contrary, — when,  in  Ireland,  overrun  by  the 
fierce  worshipers  of  Thor  and  Odin,  no  Christian  father  of  a 
family  could  tolerate  within  his  own  household  treason  to 
Christ  in  wife,  or  son,  or  daughter.  The  woman  who  was 
Brian’s  companion  during  all  his  long  struggles  against  in¬ 
vasion  from  abroad  and  strife  from  within,  was  one  worthy 
to  rear  such  sons  as  those  who  fought  Ireland’s  most  glori¬ 
ous  battle,  and  who  won  at  the  same  time  a  decisive  victory 
for  the  true  faith.  We  mention  these  names  and  dates  to 

i 

stimulate  our  students  of  Irish  History  to  complete  the  pic¬ 
ture  we  have  outlined,  and  thus  to  compare  the  practical 
faith  of  the  court  of  Ireland  in  1014  with  that  of  Scotland 
half  a  century  later. 

Of  the  exquisite  picture  of  true  conjugal  love  presented 
by  the  life  of  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary  and  her  noble  hus¬ 
band,  the  Landgrave  Louis  of  Thuringia,  we  wish  to  say 
nothing  here.f  Their  contemporaries  on  the  throne,  St. 
Louis  of  France,  and  his  wife,  Margaret  of  Provence,  are 
no  less  admirable,  and,  perhaps,  will  appear  more  imitable 
to  our  readers.  Louis  brought  to  the  bride  chosen  for  him 
by  his  saintly  mother  a  soul  which  still  preserved  its  bap¬ 
tismal  innocence  unstained  ;  and  she,  on  her  side,  had  been 
reared  with  no  less  care  in  the  refined  court  of  her  father, 
King  Rene.  When  the  young  king  bound  himself  by  vow 
to  rescue  the  Holy  Land  from  Saracen  rule,  no  persuasion 
could  induce  Queen  Margaret  to  part  from  his  side.  Au¬ 
thentic  history  has  preserved  in  all  its  touching  details  the 
story  of  her  heroic  magnanimity  in  the  midst  of  the  great¬ 
est  sufferings  and  dangers,  as  well  that  of  her  royal  hus- 


*  Ibidem,  p.  337. 

f  See  Montalembert’s  “Life  of  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary  ;  ”  also  “  Heroic 
Women  of  the  Bible  and  the  Church/’  chap,  xxxiii.,  p.  343. 


BAD  WIVES  AND  TRUE  WIVES. 


335 


band’ s  infinite  respect  for  ‘ ‘  liis  Lady  and  Companion.  ’  ’  Tlie 
Mohammedans  themselves  were  touched  and  surprised  by 
the  reverence  in  which  she,  a  woman,  was  held  by  Louis 
and  his  warlike  barons. 

Indeed,  domestic  history, — the  history  of  the  Home, — in 
the  Catholic  ages,  when  all  Western  Europe  was  one  in 
faith,  is  the  history  of  man’ s  reverence  for  woman,  of  the 
respectful,  faithful,  and  often  heroic  service  paid  by  lovers 
and  husbands  to  the  women  of  their  choice.  Woman, — 
whether  in  the  hut  or  in  the  palace, — was  given  by  the 
Church  to  man  to  be  loved,  honored,  reverenced,  and  served 
by  him  all  his  life  long, — in  memory  of  St.  Joseph’s  loving 
service  to  Mary,  and  in  imitation  of  Christ’s  constant  love 
and  care  for  His  Spouse,  the  Mother  of  all  Christians. 

Such  were  the  ideas  and  ideals  of  our  fathers.  Nor  have 
these  ideals  yet  ceased  to  govern  hearts  and  homes  in  our 
midst. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 


OBSTACLES  TO  TRUE  MANLINESS. 

I.  The  Tyranny  of  Human  Respect. 

Load  me  with  irons,  drive  me  from  morn  till  night, 

I  am  not  the  utter  slave  which  that  man  is, 

Whose  sole  word,  thought,  and  deed,  are  built  on  what 
The  world  may  say  of  him. 

In  all  things,  a  man  must  beware  of  so  conforming  himself,  as  to  crush 
his  nature  and  forego  the  purpose  of  his  being.  We  must  look  to  other  stan¬ 
dards  than  what  men  may  say  or  think.  We  must  not  abjectly  bow  down  be¬ 
fore  rulers  and  usages  ;  but  must  refer  to  principles  and  purposes. — Helps. 

There  is  one  enemy  of  true  manhood,  whether  viewed  in 
the  light  of  reason  or  of  the  Christian  revelation,  against 
whose  tyrannical  and  degrading  influence  the  soul  can  only 
be  preserved  by  grounding  it  early  in  the  fear  of  God,  and 
in  that  secure  and  lofty  independence  which  springs  from 
conscientious,  deep-seated  attachment  to  Duty.  The  cow¬ 
ardly  fear  of  a  false  and  depraved  public  opinion,  as  is  but 
too  well  known,  is  to-day  and  has  ever  been  in  the  past,  the 
deadliest  foe  of  truth  and  morality.  The  opinion,  however, 
of  which  we  would  speak  here,  is  not  that  of  the  world  in 
the  wide  sense  attached  to  the  term  “  public  opinion.”  It 
is  the  judgment  of  a  much  narrower  circle  of  men.  We 
might  limit  its  meaning  to  the  opinion  prevalent  in  the  im¬ 
mediate  society  in  which  we  live,  to  that  of  the  men  of  our 
own  profession,  nay,  to  the  standard  of  thought  and  action 
upheld  by  the  persons  with  whom  we  daily  come  in  contact, 
even  within  our  own  home,  or  within  the  establishment  to 
which  we  happen  to  belong. 


336 


HUMAN  RESPECT,  A  SLA  VISE  FEAR . 


337 


“ Human  respect’’  lias,  nevertheless,  even  a  narrower 
sense  than  this  ;  it  is  the  fear  entertained  of  what  the  low¬ 
lived  or  the  low-bred,  persons  of  low  views  or  low  tastes,  but 
of  determined  will  and  character,  may  think  or  say  of  their 
betters.  There  are,  among  such  people,  in  every  social 
circle,  in  every  walk  of  life,  some  who  have  the  terrible  fac¬ 
ulty  of  sneering  at  whatever  is  superior  to  themselves  or 
their  own  low  standard  of  life.  They  make  the  lash  of  their 
ridicule  more  dreadful  to  the  sense  of  their  weaker  and  less 
cynical  associates  than  any  bodily  torture  or  temporal  loss. 

“With  some  unfortunate  people,”  says  Sir  Arthur  Helps, 
— “the  much  dreaded  world  shrinks  into  one  person  of  more 
mental  power  than  their  own,  or,  perhaps,  merely  of  coarser 
nature  ;  and  the  fancy  as  to  what  this  person  will  say  about 
anything  they  do,  sits  them  like  a  nightmare.” 

It  is  against  this  abject  and  slavish  fear  of  what  others, — 
and  these,  too,  men  utterly  unworthy  of  all  respect, — may 
think,  judge,  say  of  us,  that  we  wish  to  warn  and  arm  our 
readers. 

W e  have  seen  men  led,  step  by  step,  to  forego  the  fulfill¬ 
ment  of  the  most  urgent  and  sacred  duties,  and  commit  ac¬ 
tions  and  contract  habits  most  abhorrent  to  their  nature, — 
lest  they  should  be  sneered  at,  or  deemed  unmanly  by  their 
acquaintance.  This  seems  monstrous  and  incredible  when 
considered  by  calm  reason,  or  when  mentioned  to  one  who 
has  had  but  little  experience  of  men.  To  most  of  our  read¬ 
ers, — of  our  young  readers  even, — it  will  recall  the  all  too 
frequent  realities  of  every-day  life. 

“  There  have  been  Catholics,”  says  Digby,  “  who  appear 
to  take  a  pride  in  imitating  the  adversaries  of  their  holy 
religion,  and  in  being  associated  in  friendship  with  them  ; 
no  one  so  dear  to  them  as  he  who  had  most  daringly  reviled 
their  holy  faith  ;  men  who  were  ashamed  of  everything  but 
what  they  had  solemnly  renounced  in  their  baptismal  vows  ; 
ashamed  of  serving  God  only  without  regard  to  the  opinion 
of  the  world  ;  ashamed  of  the  Cross ;  unwilling  that  a 
crucifix  should  be  seen  in  their  apartments  ;  afraid  to  sign 
themselves  like  all  faithful  Christians  at  the  accustomed 


338 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


time  ;  and  afraid  or  disdainful  of  all  the  exercises  of  a  peni¬ 
tential  life  ;  as  if  they  could  gain  anything  by  professing  to 
believe  with  Catholics,  and  living  after  the  manner  of  the 
Gentiles  ;  ashamed  of  some  or  all  of  the  beautiful  practices 
prescribed  by  religion,  which  are  dear  to  those  who  love  the 
Church  of  Jesus  Christ :  and  harassed  with  continual  fear, 
lest  they  should  not  always  be  seen  invested  with  the  livery 
of  the  world,  and  ready  to  concede  to  it  the  sentiments  of  a 
Christian,  and  even  the  noble  qualities  of  youth. 

‘ 4  The  spirit  of  chivalry  in  religion  would  despise  and 
abhor  this  ungenerous  and  servile  disposition,  under  what¬ 
ever  name  it  might  be  recommended,  whether  extolled  as 
liberality ,  moderation,  or  prudence  :  it  is  a  disposition  not 
only  essentially  opposed  to  divine  charity,  but  also  to  every 
sentiment  of  human  honor  ;  it  denotes  a  want  of  faith  ;  it  is 
wholly  of  the  world,  and  characteristic  of  those  who  are  of 
the  world.  It  is  deceived  too  in  all  its  wisdom.  It  was 
afraid  of  being  despised,  and  lo  !  its  endeavor  to  avoid  con¬ 
tempt  is  the  secret  scorn  of  the  very  world  that  it  would 
propitiate  ;  whereas  those  who  despised  the  ridicule  or  cen¬ 
sure  of  the  world  while  they  were  guided  by  the  discipline 
of  the  Church,  who  laughed  at  its  charge  of  superstition  or 
idolatry,  are  seen  invested  with  an  heroic  dignity  that  is 
able  to  intimidate  even  the  base  assailants,  whose  front  of 
brass  is  never  proof  against  the  power  of  holy  innocence.’ ’  * 
Who  has  not  read  of  the  great  O’Connell’s  courageous 
and  uncompromising  piety,  when,  at  public  dinners  in  Lon¬ 
don,  in  presence  of  the  most  bitter  assailants  of  his  faith 
and  the  mose  irreconcilable  enemies  of  Ireland,  he  would 
stand  up  modestly  and  manfully  to  sign  himself  with  the 
cross  before  taking  his  place  at  table  \ 

We  have  not  forgotten  the  example  of  the  late  Chief 
Justice  Morin  of  Quebec,  who,  while  he  was  prime  minister, 
would  go  publicly  every  Friday  to  perform  the  Way  of  the 
Cross  at  Notre  Dame,  Montreal,  absolutely  unconscious,  in 
his  simple-minded  piety,  of  the  sneers  and  contemptuous 

*  “  Godcfridus,”  pp.  93,  99. 


THIS  SLAVERY  MOST  DEGRADING . 


339 


looks  of  the  crowd  of  Protestant  visitors  who  pushed  their 
way  rudely  through  the  aisles,  intent  only  on  sight-seeing. 

Noble  Examples  of  Moral  Courage. 

And  how  can  we  ever  forget  the  edifying  and  heart- 
stirring  spectacle  presented  each  morning  by  the  Catholic 
churches  of  London,  where  renowned  barristers ;  members 
of  Park  ament,  titled  nobles,  high  officers  of  the  army  and 
navy,  were  to  be  seen  not  only  hearing  mass  with  rapt  devo¬ 
tion,  or  receiving  the  Bread  of  Life  with  the  adoring  faith 
of  seraphs,  but  serving  the  priest  at  the  altar  together  with 
some  little  boy,  whose  soul  was  formed  to  Christian  manli¬ 
ness  and  heroism  by  such  examples  %  And  what  is  not  to 
be  hoped  for  in  a  land  where  the  highest,  the  most  honored, 
the  most  learned,  and  the  best,  thus  exalt  themselves  by 
honoring  the  faith  of  their  fathers  % 

There,  as  the  tide  of  a  false  liberalism  or  of  avowed  radical 
infidelity  rises  daily,  threatening  the  institutions  of  the  old 
Catholic  ages, — shall  still  be  found  the  chivalrous  spirit  of 
lofty  faith  embodied  in  the  legends  of  King  Arthur  and  his 
knights.  Every  true  Christian  youth  treading  in  the  foot¬ 
steps  of  his  generous  father  can  say  to  his  mother,  in  the 
words  of  the  modern  poet : 

“  Man  am  I  grown,  a  man’s  work  must  I  do. 

Follow  deer  ?  Follow  the  Christ,  the  King, 

Live  pure,  speak  true,  right  wrong,  follow  the  King  ! 

Else,  wherefore  born  ?  ”  * 

This  tyranny  of  human  respect  is  to  be  found  first  at 
school  and  in  college, — long  before  it  has  to  be  faced  and 
beaten  down  in  the  walks  of  public  life.  The  boy  and  the 
youth  must  be  trained  to  trample  under  foot  the  despicable 
fear  of  the  evil-minded  and  the  evil-tongued,  so  as  to  be 
prepared  to  despise  it  in  ripe  manhood. 

“The  social  spirit  of  a  large  school,”  says  the  Hon.  and 
Rev.  Mr.  Petre,  “is  for  the  most  part  swayed  by  the 


*  Tennyson,  “  Gareth  and  Lynette.” 


340 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


crudest  and  baldest  of  boyisli  minds.  At  the  period  when 
muscle  is  strongest,  what  are  the  natural  tastes,  ideals,  aspi¬ 
rations  of  the  individual  man  \  Are  they  not  rather  of  the 
brutal  kind,  exhibiting  themselves  in  a  grossly  physical 
standard  of  excellence,  in  feats  of  agility  and  strength,  in 
the  pleasures  of  a  rude  good-fellowship  %  It  has  been  to 
us  ever  a  pathetic  spectacle  to  behold  the  struggles  of 
minds  sensitive  and  receptive  by  nature  and  early  influence, 
struggling  unconsciously  against  a  power  which  they  can¬ 
not  resist.”  * 

None  of  our  schools,  we  would  fain  believe,  was  ever  sub¬ 
ject  to  the  despotic  sway  of  such  anti-christian,  impious 
prejudices  as  governed  the  great  French  establishments 
since  the  suppression  of  the  Jesuits  (1764),  and  more  espe¬ 
cially  since  the  great  French  Revolution  (1789).  Foremost 
in  rampant  intolerance  was  the  Polytechnic  School,  which, 
since  its  foundation  (1795),  has  been  the  nursery  of  the  most 
distinguished  men  in  military  and  civil  professions.  Down 
to  a  comparatively  recent  date,  the  pupils  would  barely  lend 
themselves  to  a  few  occasional  religious  ceremonies  that 
bore  an  official  character.  But  woe  to  the  man  who  dared 
in  presence  of  his  fellow-students  to  profess  a  cordial  ad¬ 
herence  to  the  tenets  of  Christianity,  and  still  more  to  him 
who  ventured  to  follow  any  of  its  practices  within  the  walls 
of  the  institution  ! 

An  Heroic  Student. 

One  day,  however,  the  atrocious  tyranny  which  prevented 
and  mercilessly  repressed  any  outward  act  of  religious  faith 
was  heroically  resisted  and  conquered  by  one  true-hearted 
youth.  He  was  preeminent  for  his  talent  as  well  as  for  his 
bravery,  had  brought  with  him  from  his  admirable  mothers 
home,  enshrined  in  his  heart  of  hearts,  a  love  of  purity 
which  made  him  proof  against  all  the  awful  temptations 
that  surrounded  his  school-days,  and  a  courageous  piety 
derived  from  the  examples  much  more  than  the  teachings 


*“  Remarks  on  the  Present  Condition  of  Catholic  Liberal  Education,”  by 
Hon.  and  Rev.  W.  Petre,  p.  1G. 


THIS  TYRANNY  EXERCISED  IN  SCHOOLS . 


341 


of  botli  his  parents.  His  talents,  on  his  entrance  into  the 
Polytechnic  School,  won  the  admiration  of  his  companions, 
while  his  frank,  joyous,  generous,  and  manly  character, 
conciliated  the  affection  of  not  a  few. 

He  had  made  up  his  mind  to  do  there  openly  what  he 
had  uniformly  done  at  college,  go  to  confession  and  commu¬ 
nion.  Ho  student,  since  the  memorable  25th  of  May,  1795, 
when  the  school  was  first  inaugurated,  had  ever  been  seen 
at  the  Communion  Table  within  their  chapel.  It  was  whis¬ 
pered  that  this  proscriptive  tradition  was  now  about  to  be 
set  aside,  and  the  boldest  and  worst  of  the  school  conspired 
to  prevent  it.  They  resolved  to  stop  at  no  excess  either  of 
outrage  or  of  violence  which  might  effectually  deter  any 
one  from  ever  again  following  such  an  example. 

Of  this  our  young  hero  was  perfectly  aware.  But  he  was 
determined  to  do  quietly  and  publicly  what  he  conceived  to 
be  his  duty  to  God  and  to  his  misguided  associates.  So  he 
went  to  confession,  and,  on  the  following  morning, — some 
great  yearly  festival,  when  all  were  obliged  to  assist  at 
mass, — he  modestly  and  devoutly  received  the  Holy  Com¬ 
munion,  and  then  withdrew  to  his  place  in  the  ranks,  where 
he  remained  kneeling  at  the  end  of  the  service,  while  the 
students  marched  out  past  him. 

The  head  conspirator,  as  he  passed  by  the  kneeling  youth, 
whose  eyes  were  cast  on  the  ground  and  his  arms  folded 
across  his  breast, — spat  on  the  face  of  the  latter,  who  moved 
not,  winced  not  under  the  insult.  Another,  and  another,  and 
yet  another  repeated  the  dastardly  outrage  ;  but  the  kneel¬ 
ing  youth  contented  himself  with  removing  the  filth  from  his 
face,  without  ever  raising  his  eyes  from  the  ground.  The 
more  generous  of  those  who  witnesed  the  scene  murmured 
aloud  at  the  indignity,  and  the  murmur  soon  became  pretty 
general,  as  one  after  the  other  of  the  many  friends  of  the 
victim,  remonstrated  in  no  gentle  terms.  The  climax  came 
when  the  last  of  the  unmanly  crew,  not  content  with  spit¬ 
ting  into  the  young  man’ s  face,  struck  him  on  the  cheek. 

There  was  forthwith  an  uproar,  and  more  than  one  of 
those  who  had  remonstrated,  now  took  up  the  quarrel  as  a 


342 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


personal  one.  As  everybody  knows,  the  Polytechnic  pupils 
are  allowed  to  wear  arms,  and  the  law  of  dueling  is  rigidly 
enforced.  One  must  either  fight  or  leave  the  school.  All 
admitted  the  bravery  of  our  hero  and  his  great  superiority 
as  a  swordsman.  Already,  however,  and  before  the  latter 1 
had  quitted  the  chapel,  a  large  number  had  sided  with  him, 
not  because  they  shared  his  convictions  or  his  piety,  but 
because  they  resented  such  a  proceeding  as  an  act  of  down¬ 
right  cowardice  and  unwarrantable  intolerance.  So,  the 
authorities  of  the  institution  and  the  Minister  of  War  him¬ 
self  peremptorily  interfered  to  prevent  any  hostilities. 

The  noble  youth  himself,  when  he  came  forth  from  the 
chapel,  professed  himself  ready  to  answer  any  one  who 
should  challenge  his  courage  or  impugn  his  honor,  while 
many  of  his  companions  came  forward  to  grasp  his  hapd 
warmly,  and  to  congratulate  him  on  his  manly  assertion  of 
independence. 

It  was  a  complete  revolution.  Our  hero  was  not  again 
molested  when  he  deemed  it  proper  to  profess  thus  openly 
his  reverence  for  the  faith  of  his  fathers ;  and  more  than 
one  of  his  fellows  took  courage  and  imitated  his  example. 

Since  then  the  little  band  of  Polytechnicians  who  practice 
their  religion  without  disguise  or  reserve  has  been  yearly  on 
the  increase,  thanks  to  the  numerous  accessions  of  strength 
from  the  great  Jesuit  preparatory  schools  of  St.  Genevieve 
in  Paris  and  St.  Clement  in  Metz,  as  well  as  such  other 
glorious  schools  as  that  of  the  late  Monseigneur  Cruice 
(. Ecole  cles  Cannes). 

Is  this  not, — only  in  a  far  higher  form, — the  heroic  spirit 
which  led  the  boy  Gareth,  in  order  to  become  one  of  Ar¬ 
thur’  s  knights,  to  consent  to  serve  a  whole  year  as  a  scullion 
in  Arthur’ s  kitchen,  concealing  from  all  but  his  own  mother, 
Queen  Bellicent,  his  rank  and  his  name,  and  subjecting 
himself  to  the  brutalities  heaped  on  him  by  the  Seneschal, 
Sir  Kay,  v  •-  A  ri.  bf* 

“  A  man  of  mien 

Wan -sallow  as  tlie  plant  that  feels  itself 
Root-bitten  by  white  lichen.” 


HOYAL  SPIRIT  OF  CHRISTIAN  HEROISM. 


343 


Not  so  the  bravest  of  all  the  Table  Hound,  the  peerless 
Lancelot :  with  the  instinct  with  which  brave  hearts  detect 
each  other  as  surely  as  magnet  draws  magnet,  Lancelot 
divines  the  boy’s  quality  and  worth,  reproving  the  mean- 
spirited  Kay. 

“  Some  young  lad’s  mystery — 

But,  or  from  sheepcot  or  king’s  hall,  the  boy 
Is  noble-natured.  Treat  him  with  all  grace. 

Lest  he  should  come  to  shame  thy  judging  of  him. 

...  So  Gareth  all  for  glory  underwent 
The  sooty  yoke  of  kitchen  vassalage  ; 

Ate  with  young  lads  his  portion  by  the  door. 

And  couched  at  night  with  grimy  kitchen-knaves. 

And  Lancelot  ever  spake  him  pleasantly, 

And  Kay,  the  seneschal,  who  loved  him  not. 

Would  hustle  and  harry  him,  and  labor  him 
Beyond  his  comrades  of  the  hearth,  and  set 
To  turn  the  broach,  draw  water,  or  hew  wood. 

Or  grosser  tasks  ;  and  Gareth  bow’d  himself 
With  all  obedience  to  the  King,  and  wrought 
All  kinds  of  service  with  a  noble  ease 
That  graced  the  lowliest  act  in  doing  it.” 

This  is  the  right -royal  spirit  of  the  children  of  God, 
who  understand  the  priceless  value  of  their  birthright,  who 
cherish  that  lofty  spirit  of  freedom  bestowed  on  them  by 
their  father,  Christ,  beyond  and  above  all  earthly  honors, 
and  whose  soul  can  never  stoop  to  be  the  slave  of  human 
opinion. 

Not  unfrequently  in  the  little  world  of  the  school, — as  in 
the  broader  and  bolder  world  where  Human  Respect  reigns 
supreme  in  court,  and  shop,  in  army  and  navy,  by  the  fire¬ 
side,  in  the  ball-room,  and  reception-room,  those  who  are 
bent  on  ‘‘following  the  King,”  will  hear  themselves,  in 
their  most  heroic  hour,  addressed  as  Gareth  was  by  the 
Lady  Lynette : 

“  Wbat  dost  thou,  scullion,  in  my  fellowship? 

.  .  .  Thou  !  — 

Dish-washer  and  broach -turner,  loon  ! — to  me 
%  Thou  smellest  all  of  kitchen  as  before.” 

And  what  is  to  be  the  demeanor  of  the  true  knightly 
Christian  under  the  outrage  \ 


344 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


“Damsel,”  Sir  Gareth  answered  gently, — “say 
Wliate’er  ye  will,  but  whatsoe’er  ye  say, 

I  leave  not  till  I  finish  this  fair  quest, 

Or  die  therefor.” 

Even  where  Human  Respect  would  damp  the  ardor  of  be¬ 
ginners  by  putting  over  them  such  tyrants  as  Kay,  or  giving 
them  for  guides  in  their  quest  of  all  true  excellence  pur¬ 
blind  souls  or  unworthy  models,  whose  lives,  even  more 
strongly  than  their  words,  would  drive  God’s  servant  from 
the  right  road  and  all  holy  enterprise, — the  spirit  of  God 
within  boy  and  man  would  reply  : 

“  Say  thou  thy  say,  and  I  will  do  my  deed  ! 

Lead,  and  I  follow  !  ” 

And  who  can  tell  what  may  be,  in  God’s  purpose,  the 
blessed,  soul-saving  influence  of  men  who  have,  like  the 
mountain  pine  or  oak  or  the  cedars  of  Lebanon,  grown  up 
and  waxed  strong  amid  solitude,  sterility,  and  storm  ? 

Other  Noble  Examples. 

We  could,  as  we  write  these  words,  point  to  one  man 
brought  up  amid  the  soul-struggles  of  that  same  Polytech¬ 
nic  School,  become,  as  a  soldier,  the  close  companion  of 
royalty  itself  on  the  battle-fields  of  Africa, — and  now  the 
head  and  the  saintly  guide  of  the  chiefest  training-school  in 
America  of  one  of  our  great  religious  orders. 

We  know  of  another,  the  near  relative,  almost  the  brother 
in  age  as  he  was  in  closest  friendship,  of  Ireland’s  purest 
novelist,  who  living  abroad  in  the  world,  while  his  uncle 
sought  rest  and  refuge  in  the  cloister,  was  always  and  every¬ 
where,  before  and  above  all  else,  the  professed  and  devoted 
Christian.  Once  called  to  the  Capital  on  legislative  busi¬ 
ness  with  a  gentleman  from  Boston,  a  Unitarian,  he  charmed 
the  other  all  along  their  journey  by  his  bright  joyous  spirit 
and  most  interesting  conversation.  They  shared  the  same 
room  at  the  hotel,  the  Catholic  gentleman  before  he  retired, 
performing  unobtrusively,  but  at  full  length,  his  customary 
devotions. 


SUCH  EXAMPLES  A  PATH  OF  LIGHT. 


345 


For  weeks  they  continued  to  live  and  labor  together,  sur¬ 
rounded  by  an  atmosphere  which  was  anything  but  an  at¬ 
mosphere  of  purity  and  integrity,  witnessing  the  sayings 
and  doings  of  men, — and  of  Catholic  men  among  these, — 
who  were  neither  edifying,  nor  honorable,  nor  honest. 
Meanwhile,  though  forced  to  mix  with  persons  of  every 
official  rank,  it  was  the  boast  of  the  generous  and  candid- 
minded  Unitarian  that  he  had  never  seen  anything  in  his 
companion’s  acts,  or  heard  a  single  word  from  his  lips,  that 
w^as  not  most  worthy  of  the  thorough  gentleman  and  the 
thorough  Christian. 

“  I  had  never  till  then, — he  afterward  was  wont  to  say, 
— “seen  any  gentlemen  kneel  while  saying  his  night  pray¬ 
ers  :  indeed  I  had  never  known  of  an  instance  where  a  gen¬ 
tleman  alone  with  another  thought  of  saying  any  such 
prayers.  So,  what  was  my  astonisment  when  I  first  saw 
my  friend,  whose  learning,  wisdom,  and  integrity  I  had 
learned  to  prize  so  highly,  kneeling  quietly  down  by  his 
bedside,  in  the  almost  total  darkness  of  the  room,  and  when 
he  thought  me  fast  asleep,  and  pouring  forth  his  soul  in 
adoration  and  praise  to  God,  with  a  fervor  that  struck  on 
my  interior  sense  like  the  first  notes  of  a  strange  but  most 
sweet  music ! 

“I  watched  him  thenceforward,  night  after  night  and 
day  after  day,  to  assure  myself  that  all  was  consistent  in 
his  conduct,  and  my  respect  and  admiration  grew  daily  and 
hourly.  For  years  our  acquaintance  continued,  ripening  at 
last  into  friendship.  The  lessons  I  learned  in  his  life  and 
in  his  home,  were  to  me  lessons  of  a  new  religion, — which  I 
was  impelled  to  study,  to  admire,  and  to  embrace. 

“If  I  am  a  Catholic  to-day  with  all  my  family,  we  owe 
that  inestimable  grace,  under  God,  to  the  light  of  my  dear 
friend’s  example.” 

How  many  others  in  our  day,  as  in  the  first  ages  of  the 
Church,  have  been  led  into  the  household  of  the  faith  by 
the  irresistible  example  of  Catholics  who  knew  not  Human 
Respect,  showed  themselves  openly,  in  public  and  in  pri¬ 
vate,  what  they  were,  true  to  God  and  fearless  of  human 


346 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


opinion  ?  We  heard  from  the  Lady  Lothian,  whose  saintly 
life  was  a  blessing  to  all  London,  and  whose  saintly  death 
tilled  all  Rome  with  its  fragrance, — the  touching  story  of 
her  own  conversion  ;  how  curiosity  or  a  kindly  interest  in 
her  Catholic  servants  induced  her  to  visit  the  place  where 
they  wrent  to  worship  on  Sundays  ;  how  she  found  a  poor  gar¬ 
ret  in  a  private  house  thronged  with  a  promiscuous  crovTd, 
among  whom  a  priest  busied  himself  in  hearing  confessions. 
Then  came  the  mass,  celebrated  on  a  poor  temporary  altar, 
while  the  rapt  devotion  of  the  kneeling  crowd  of  worshipers, 
and  all  the  poverty  and  nakedness  of  the  place,  reminded 
the  high-born  lady  of  the  Stable  of  Bethlehem  and  the 
throng  of  Shepherds  bidden  to  adore  the  new-born  Messiah. 

The  example  which  we  are  about  to  adduce,  if  it  have  its 
consoling,  its  heroic,  its  most  glorious  side,  teaches  also  this 
lesson,  that  the  Divine  Majesty  exacts  from  highly  privi¬ 
leged  souls  a  terrible  expiation  for  yielding  even  a  mo¬ 
mentary  and  secret  consent  to  some  one  of  those  public  sins 
which  are  the  ruin  of  the  proud  and  the  rash. 

At  the  head  of  the  Young  Men’s  Sodality,  attached  to  the 
church  and  college  of  St.  Francis  Xavier,  Saint  Louis,  was, 
just  when  our  great  civil  war  broke  out,  an  officer  of  the 
United  States  army,  distinguished  alike  for  his  birth,  his 
talents  and  bravery,  and  still  more  for  his  enlightened  and 
active  piety.  He  was  the  pride  and  the  model  of  the  Catho¬ 
lic  youth  of  his  native  city. 

Unfortunately,  as  it  ever  happens  in  civil  contests,  the 
question  of  allegiance  to  the  Federal  Government  as  against 
the  rights  of  the  individual  States,  wras  discussed  with  fierce 
passionateness,  neighbor  taking  part  against  neighbor, 
friend  against  friend,  and  brother  against  brother  within 
the  bosom  of  families  hitherto  most  united.  It  so  happened 
that  a  brother  officer,  a  former  schoolmate  at  the  Military 
Academy,  took  openly  sides  wfith  the  seceding  States,  en¬ 
tering  into  a  warm  controversy  writh  our  friend,  who  as 
openly  professed  himself  bound  by  his  oath  of  allegiance 
to  the  fiag  of  the  Union.  The  dispute  found  its  way  into 
the  public  prints,  and  the  former  friend  deeming  that  an 


SUCH  EXAMPLES  A  PATH  OF  LIGHT. 


347 


imputation  liad  been  cast  upon  his  honor,  sent  his  adversary 
a  challenge. 

The  terms  in  which  it  was  conveyed,  the  taunt  of  disloy¬ 
alty  to  the  South,  and  the  imputation  of  unworthy  motives 
were  such  as  must  gall  beyond  endurance  even  the  most 

phlegmatic.  Colonel  G - was,  like  all  his  family,  a  man 

of  proud,  sensitive,  and  wrathful  temper.  Much  as  he  had 
learned  to  conquer  himself,  the  reception  and  reading  of  the 
missive  found  nature  off  its  guard.  He  resolved  to  accept 
the  challenge  thus  cast  in  his  teeth.  It  was  but  the  act  of 
a  moment,  known  only  to  Him  who  reads  the  secrets  of 
hearts, — and  disclosed  to  no  human  being  save  his  con¬ 
fessor.  It  was, — we  have  said, — only  a  momentary  consent 
yielded  by  natural  passion,  but  recalled  the  next  moment 
under  the  impulse  of  divine  grace  with  heartfelt  sorrow. 

The  noble  and  pure  soul  could  not  brook  that  even  this 

secret  stain  should  long  remain  upon  it ;  so  Colonel  G - 

sought  his  confessor,  and  implored  the  divine  forgiveness 
on  his  sin.  The  next  morning  he  knelt  contrite  and  purified 
at  the  Table  of  the  Lamb,  pouring  forth  his  grief  at  the  feet 
of  his  divine  Guest,  and  making  there  heroic  resolves  for  the 
future. 

Just  as  he  rose  from  the  audience  with  the  King  of  Kings, 
and  was  about  leaving  the  church,  he  was  met  by  a  member 
of  the  Ladies’  Sodality,  a  woman  of  humble  station  but  re¬ 
vered  as  a  Saint  by  all  who  knew  her.  4  4 1  have  a  message  for 
you,  Colonel,”  she  said,  in  her  gentle  tones,  while  her  face 
shone  with  a  light  that  was  not  of  earth.  4  4  Our  Lord  has 
been  deeply  offended  that  one  so  dear  to  His  heart  as  you 
are,  so  favored  by  Him,  and  bound  by  your  place  to  give 
such  high  example  to  others,  should  have  consented,  even 
for  a  moment,  to  risk  your  own  life  or  take  that  of  another 
in  a  duel.  God,  however,  has  accepted  your  sincere  sor¬ 
row  ;  your  sin  is  forgiven.  But  I  am  bidden  to  tell  you, 
that,  in  expiation  of  your  guilt,  you  shall  forfeit  your  life 
in  the  first  great  battle  in  which  you  are  engaged.” 

The  Christian  gentleman  bowed  down  every  power  of  his 
soul  before  this  manifestation  of  that  adorable  Will  so 


348 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


merciful  and  tender  even  in  the  decrees  of  its  justice.  He 
could  have  no  doubt,  he  had  none,  as  to  the  awful  truth  of 
the  communication  thus  made  to  him.  To  his  brother  only 
did  he,  on  the  eve  of  his  departure  for  active  warfare,  dis¬ 
close  his  impending  fate,  and  its  cause.  The  certainty  of 
the  event  gave  to  his  whole  conduct  thenceforward  a  char¬ 
acter  of  unspeakable  moral  beauty.  With  his  whole  heart 
and  soul  he  devoted  himself  to  the  cause  of  the  Union, 
watching  over  his  every  thought,  and  word,  and  deed,  as 
one  should  who  had  already  half  entered  beyond  the  veil, 
and  on  whom  the  light  of  the  Divine  Judgment  had  already 
fallen.  There  was  in  his  whole  bearing  a  calm,  unruffled 
serenity,  a  firm  and  steady  gentleness,  a  charity  and  for¬ 
bearance  toward  others,  a  helpful  and  brotherly  kindness 
toward  his  subordinates,  an  unwearied  devotion  to  the  sick, 
the  suffering,  and  the  wounded,  that  were  only  half  under¬ 
stood  and  appreciated  when  he  was  no  more.  A  thousand 
graceful  acts  were  then  told  of  him  by  the  men  who  had 
witnessed  his  chivalrous  bearing  in  life,  and  wept  at  the 
remembrance  of  his  glorious  death. 

He  was  made  chief  of  staff  to  his  friend,  General  Rose- 
cranz.  They  were  of  the  same  religious  faith  ;  indeed,  if 
we  remember  aright,  the  General  owed  his  conversion  in 
great  part  to  the  beautiful  life  of  his  loved  companion  in 
arms.  Side  by  side  throughout  the  autumn  of  1862,  the 
two  soldier-friends  labored  to  organize  a  large  and  effective 
army.  The  very  last  day  of  the  year  found  them  before 
Murfreesborough  at  the  head  of  about  50,000,  and  con¬ 
fronted  by  a  force  equal  in  numbers  and  in  bravery.  Itose- 
cranz  as  well  as  his  chief  of  staff  knew  that  on  the  battle  to 
be  fought  on  that  memorable  31st  of  December,  depended 
in  a  great  measure  the  success  of  the  cause  to  which  both 
his  friend  and  himself  had  devoted  their  lives. 

Long  before  the  dawn  the  general-in-chief  had  the  Holy 
Sacrifice  celebrated  in  his  tent,  Catholic  officers  and  men 
devoutly  assisting  thereat,  and  Colonel  G - taking  to  him¬ 

self  the  honor  of  serving  the  priest.  The  two  friends  re¬ 
ceived  with  touching  fervor  the  divine  Gift, — the  bond  of  that 


SUCII  EXAMPLES  A  PATH  OF  LIGHT. 


349 


most  sacred  union  of  souls,  which  the  impending  death  of 
one  of  them  could  not  interrupt.  Many  a  brave  man  knelt 
at  that  tent-door,  in  the  cold  and  gloom  of  the  December 
morning,  or  partook  of  that  Bread  of  the  Strong,  who  be¬ 
held  not  the  dawn  of  the  new  year. 

Throughout  the  first  part  of  that  eventful  day,  Colonel 

G - displayed  a  calm  joyousness  which  his  chief  alone 

could  perfectly  understand.  He  seemed  to  multiply  his 
presence  over  the  vast  field  of  action  as  his  horse  bore  him 
like  the  wind  to  communicate  orders  to  the  various  divi¬ 
sional  commanders.  And,  it  is  said,  when  the  worsted 
Union  forces  paused  to  reform  their  line  and  renew  the 
struggle,  he  profited  by  the  lull  to  withdraw  to  a  quiet  cor¬ 
ner  near  a  fence,  and  there  to  kneel  unobserved, — as  he 
thought  himself, — to  renew  the  offering  of  his  life. 

He  had  passed  unharmed  through  the  terrible  scenes  of 
the  morning  and  the  early  afternoon.  As  the  victorious 
enemy  were  concentrating  all  their  strength  for  the  final 
shock,  he  knew  with  unquestioning  certainty  that  his  last 
hour  was  come.  Again  and  again  as  the  Federal  right  were 
driven  from  position  to  position,  General  Rosecranz  had 
cheered  his  brave  men  with  the  assurance  that  “  this  battle 
must  and  shall  be  won  !  ”  Did  his  generous  chief  of  staff, 
as  he  made  his  last  prayer,  offer  up  his  young  life  to  the 
God  of  battles  for  the  triumph  of  the  Union  arms  ?  We 
know  not. 

But  when  he  rose,  a  new  light  was  on  his  face,  as  he  took 
his  place  by  the  side  of  his  commander  ;  his  voice  had  a 
tone  of  triumph  as  he  bore  the  final  orders  along  the  line. 
And  when  the  advance  sounded,  his  sword  leaped  from  its 
scabbard,  as  he  prepared  to  quit  the  side  of  Rosecranz  and 
lead  the  charge  in  person.  At  that  moment,  and  while 
waving  his  sword,  a  cannon  ball  struck  off  his  head,  the 
blood  covering  the  person  of  his  devoted  friend  and  gen¬ 
eral. 

Yes, — the  fortune  of  battle  was  retrieved ;  but  in  the 
deep  sadness  which  tempered  the  joy  of  generals  and  sol¬ 
diers,  all  recalled  the  chivalrous  figure  of  G - as  it  had 


350 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


shone  over  that  bloody  field,  and  had  been  stricken  down 
with  the  cheer  of  victory  ringing  from  his  lips. 

They  only  knew  and  admired  the  blameless  life,  the  un¬ 
shaken  attachment  to  duty,  the  heroic  devotion  to  princi¬ 
ple,  the  untiring  and  ingenious  charity, — the  accomplished 
gentleman  and  the  dauntless  soldier.  God  and  His  angels 
alone  knew  of  the  one  momentary  stain  on  the  beautiful 
soul  atoned  for  by  this  early  and  tragic  death, — as  that 
purified  Spirit  was  greeted  on  high  with  the  “  Well  done !  ” 
from  His  lips  who  is  the  sole  Lord  of  Eternity.  In  him 
was  what  we  commend  to  the  study  of  our  cultivated 
youth,  the  Altum  quiddam  et  excelsum ,  nihil  timens ,  ne- 
mini  cedens ,  semper  inmctum .* 

*  “A  something  (heart)  elevated  and  sublime,  which  feared  nothing,  yielded 
to  no  (wicked)  one,  evermore  unconquered.” — Cicero,  De  Finibus,  ii.  14. 


CHAPTER  X  Y  III. 


OBSTACLES  TO  MANLINESS  (CONTINUED). 

II.  The  Seduction  of  Evil  Example . 

But  if  their  talk  were  foul, 

Then  would  he  whistle  rapid  as  any  lark, 

Or  carol  some  old  roundelay,  and  so  loud 

That  first  they  mocked,  but,  after,  reverenced  him. 

Tennyson. 

i 

It  were  hard  to  show  which  is  more  baneful  to  the  health 
and  growth  of  all  true  manliness,  the  influence  of  human 
respect  or  that  of  evil  example.  The  sneer  or  scoff  of  the 
base  or  the  perverse,  acts  through  fear  of  ridicule,  on  the 
soul  like  the  chilly  atmosphere  or  late  frosts  of  springtide, 
preventing  the  fair  buds  from  bursting  their  sheaths,  or 
blighting,  as  by  one  breath,  the  opening  flowers,  and  thus 
marring  all  the  promise  of  the  year.  Evil  example,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  like  the  sickly  atmosphere  that  broods 
over  some  marsh-covered  region,  converting  the  very  bounty 
of  the  soil  into  a  rank  luxuriance  that  is  worse  than  barren¬ 
ness,  and  slowly  but  surely  poisoning  in  man  all  the  springs 
of  health  and  bodily  vigor. 

Nothing  can  be  more  lovely  to  the  beholder  than  the 
Italian  regions  known  as  the  Maremma  and  the  Roman 
Campagna  at  the  springtide  of  the  year, — or  the  plains  and 
forests  of  Guiana,  when  the  rainy  season  is  past,  and  the 
earth  clothes  itself  with  the  incomparable  magnificence  of 
its  tropical  vegetation. 

If,  while  visiting,  near  Ostia,  the  scenes  where  Augustine 
and  Monica  conversed  at  eventide  fifteen  hundred  years 

351 


352 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


ago, — just  when  the  malarial  fever  was  draining  in  the 
heroic  mother  the  last  sources  of  life, — you  should  be 
tempted  to  repose  at  evening  beneath  the  wide-spreading 
ilexes  or  pines,  or  to  spend  the  night  beneath  the  clear, 
calm  sky,  with  the  mingled  fragrance  of  a  thousand  wild 
flowers  around  you, — we  bid  you  beware  !  There  is  death 
in  that  balmy  air,  death  in  the  grateful  coolness  and  seren¬ 
ity  of  the  treacherous  atmosphere.  It  is  not  an  unapt  pic¬ 
ture  of  the  scenes  where  evil  example  is  all-powerful.  Let 
us  pause  awhile,  and  take  in  the  salutary  truth  gently  and 
pleasantly. 

“  About  your  feet  tbe  myrtles  will  be  set, 

Gray  rosemary,  and  thyme,  and  tender  blue 
Of  love-pale  labyrinthine  violet  ; 

Flame-born  anemones  will  glitter  through 
Dark  aisles  of  roofing  pine-trees  ;  and  for  you 
The  golden  jonquil  and  starred  asphodel 
And  hyacinth  their  speechless  tale  will  tell. 

“  The  nightingales  for  you  their  tremulous  song 
Shall  pour  amid  the  snowy  scented  bloom 
Of  wild  acacia  bowers,  and  all  night  long 

Through  starlight-flooded  spheres  of  purple  gloom 
Still  lemon-bouglis  shall  spread  their  faint  perfume. 

Soothing  your  sense  with  odors  sweet  as  sleep, 

While  wind-stirred  cypresses  low  music  keep.” 

The  cities  which  once  studded  that  shore  have  long  ago 
ceased  to  be  inhabited.  The  shepherds  and  swineherds  for¬ 
sake  the  lowlands  at  sunset  and  betake  themselves  to  their 
villages  among  the  surrounding  hills,  for  they  know  that 
Fever  is  king  on  the  plain. 

Universal  Sway  of  Evil  Example. 

Such  is  the  silent,  pestilential,  irresistible  power  of  evil 
example  in  the  world. 

Example  is  potent  in  the  home, — from  the  court  of  the 
sovereign  or  the  mansion  of  the  chief  magistrate,  to  the  hut 
of  the  backwoodsman,  or  the  most  wretched  lodgings  of  our 
laboring  poor.  Example  is  all-powerful  of  father  over  sons, 
of  the  mother  over  her  daughters,  of  elder  brother  over  his 


THE  SCANDAL  OF  JEROBOAM, . 


353 


younger,  of  prince  or  magistrate  over  tlieir  subject  people, 
of  priest  over  liis  flock,  of  every  man  placed  in  authority 
over  those  beneath  him. 

Need  we  describe  the  baneful  effects  over  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  children  of  the  evil  example  of  their  parents  ? 
There  is  not  one  of  us  who  cannot  daily  convince  himself 
of  it  by  observing  near  his  own  home  how  the  evil  life  of  a 
father  or  a  mother  slowly  but  surely  perverts  the  happiest 
dispositions  in  their  children. 

It  .is,  nevertheless,  of  the  utmost  importance  that  we 
should  take  a  few  lessons  from  the  history  of  the  past  as  well 
as  the  experience  of  our  own  time. 

Jeroboam,  a  descendant  of  that  Joseph  who  had  been  the 
second  parent  of  Israel,  as  well  as  the  savior  and  ruler  of 
the  Egyptian  empire,  was  forced  to  take  refuge  there  from 
the  jealousy  of  Solomon.  There,  however,  he  imbibed  a 
great  admiration  of  the  barbaric  civilization  of  the  people, 
sought  an  alliance  with  the  reigning  family,  allowed  the  sen¬ 
suous  worship  of  the  Egyptians  to  captivate  him,  returned 
to  his  home  in  the  mountains  of  Ephraim  with  a  heathen 
wife, — and,  when  chosen  king  of  the  new  kingdom  of  Israel, 
erected,  in  opposition  to  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem,  two 
places  of  worship  in  which  he  installed  the  statues  of  Mne- 
vis,  the  god-calf,  so  well  known  to  Moses  and  his  contem¬ 
poraries  during  the  captivity  in  the  land  of  the  Pharaohs. 
He  consecrated  a  priesthood  of  his  own,  flattering  the  rebel¬ 
lious  Ten  Tribes  with  the  declaration  that  the  deities  which 
had  made  Egypt  so  prosperous  and  so  powerful  would  now 
secure  their  own  national  supremacy  :  he  was  the  first  on 
that  same  revered  site  of  Bethel  so  dear  to  Jacob  and  hal¬ 
lowed  by  so  many  traditions,  to  offer  incense  to  Mnevis  with 
his  own  hand,  forbidding  thenceforth  any  of  his  subjects  to 
go  to  worship  in  Jerusalem. 

They  were  but  too  faithful  imitators  of  his  apostasy,  in¬ 
duced  to  forsake  or  blaspheme  the  God  of  their  fathers,  not 
so  much  by  the  edicts  of  their  chosen  ruler,  as  by  the  seduc¬ 
tion  of  his  example.  And  thus  we  find  in  Jeroboam  the  pat¬ 
tern  of  more  than  one  Christian  king. 

23 


354 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Achab,  Jeroboam’s  successor  at  the  distance  of  half  a 
century,  knew  well  what  ascendency  royal  example  had  in 
swaying  the  conduct  of  court  and  kingdom.  He  married  a 
Phenician  princess,  J ezabel,  and  with  her  brought  into  his 
realm  the  abominations  of  the  Phenician  idolatry,  and  into 
every  family  almost  the  added  pollution  of  his  wife’s  mo¬ 
rality.  Achab,  though  believing  in  the  God  of  his  fathers, 
was  seduced  by  his  wife’s  example  to  bend  the  knee  to 
Baal  and  to  erect  to  him  a  magnificent  temple  with  a  retinue 
of  thousands  of  ministers  in  his  own  capital.  And  so,  to 
please  Jezabel  and  Achab,  all  Israel  worshiped  Baal. 

Fatal  Weakness  of  the  good  King  Joshapliat. 

There  was  worse  than  this.  Contemporary  with  Achab 
at  Samaria,  reigned  the  good  King  Joshapliat  in  Jerusalem. 
There  was  nothing  he  could  think  of  for  the  glory  of  the 
true  living  God,  for  the  extirpation  of  idolatry,  the  educa¬ 
tion  and  welfare  of  his  people,  that  Joshapliat  did  not  un¬ 
dertake  with  his  whole  heart.  Nevertheless,  the  necessity 
of  uniting  against  common  foes  having  forced  him  into  an 
alliance  with  Achab,  he  and  his  son  were  thus  brought 
within  the  fatal  influence  of  Jezabel  and  her  court,  so  full 
of  superstition  and  sensuous  enchantments. 

The  pious  King  of  Juda  was  induced  by  the  wiles  of  the 
enchantress  to  seek  the  hand  of  Athalia,  Jezabel’s  daughter, 
for  his  son  and  heir.  Athalia’ s  seduction  made  a  Baal- 
worshiper  of  her  husband,  induced  him,  when  he  ascended 
the  throne,  to  cut  off  his  brothers  and  their  offspring,  and 
to  have  Baal  proclaimed  in  Jerusalem  as  the  national  god. 

Was  it  not  by  flattering,  in  a  like  manner,  the  national 
vanity  of  the  English,  by  nursing  the  natural  hatred  of 
foreigners  and  foreign  domination,  even  in  things  spiritual, 
— that  Henry  V III.  separated  England  from  the  Holy  See  ? 
He  could  not  obtain  from  the  Sovereign  Pontiff  a  decree  di¬ 
vorcing  Queen  Catharine,  and  the  faculty  of  raising  Anna 
Boleyn  to  his  bed  and  throne,  nor  persuade  his  people  to 
countenance  his  adulterous  hypocrisy.  But  he  did  succeed 


MODERN  INSTANCES. 


855 


in  making  the  national  anti- Roman  prejudice  favor  his  crea¬ 
tion  of  an  independent  national  church,  with  a  schismatical 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  who  soon  granted  the  divorce 
sought  for,  and  the  faculty  of  having  as  many  wives  as 
Henry  chose. 

And  so  was  verified  the  saying  as  old  as  the  world  : 

Regis  in  exemplum  totus  componitur  orbis. 

“  Tlie  King’s  example  sways  each  subject’s  home.” 

In  all  this  Henry  had  only  followed  the  example  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Constantinople,  Photius,  and  his  Greek  Em¬ 
peror.  They  nursed  and  fanned  into  a  fatal  blaze  the  in¬ 
veterate  jealousy  entertained  by  Greeks  against  Latins,  by 
Constantinople  against  Rome, — severing  from  union  with 
the  See  of  Peter  the  whole  of  Eastern  Christendom  for  up¬ 
ward  of  a  thousand  years  !  And  in  the  footsteps  of  Pho¬ 
tius  walked  every  Greek  bishop,  in  the  footsteps  of  the 
bishops  walked  the  priests, — just  as  the  princes  and  nobles 
followed  the  example  of  their  emperor  ! 

Is  not  this  the  history  of  the  English  Reformation  % 

Still  nearer  our  own  times  we  have  in  the  personal  exam¬ 
ples  of  two  kings  of  France,  the  direct  cause  of  the  down¬ 
fall  of  the  monarchy,  of  the  ruin  of  morality  and  of  religion 
itself.  The  uncommonly  long  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  and  of 
his  immediate  successor  and  great-grandson,  Louis  XV., 
were  one  unbroken  series  of  the  most  shameless  scandals. 
The  palaces  of  these  descendants  of  St.  Louis  had  become, 
in  the  eyes  of  all  Europe,  the  abode  of  openly  avowed  and 
almost  legalized  adultery, — the  fearful  scandal  of  the  sove¬ 
reign’  s  private  life  and  the  open  immoralities  of  his  home 
setting  a  pattern  to  be  imitated  by  every  one  of  his  nobles. 
And  thus,  for  upward  of  a  century,  corruption  and  licen¬ 
tiousness  in  the  home-life  of  the  leading  nation  of  Christen-, 
dom  spread  from  above  downward,  from  royalty  and  no¬ 
bility,  to  the  wealthy  middle  classes,  and  from  these  to  the 
laboring  masses  in  city  and  country. 

With  licentiousness  spread  extravagance,  and  with  ex¬ 
travagance  grew  the  oppression  of  the  poor  by  the  govern- 


356 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


ing  classes.  Step  by  step  with  immorality,  venality,  and 
oppression,  progressed  distrust  in  religion  ;  in  the  French 
society  of  the  18th  century,  the  gay  vices  of  the  court  of 
the  regent  D’ Orleans  and  of  his  pupil  the  fifteenth  Louis 
were  in  fashion,  and  equally  fashionable  were  the  infidel 
and  skeptical  opinions  of  Voltaire  and  his  Encyclopedists, 
— the  example  of  the  high-born  loosening  in  the  bourgeoisie 
beneath  them  all  belief  in  royalty,  in  virtue,  in  morality,  in 
religion,  all  respect  for  every  thing  till  then  held  most  sacred 
by  the  nation.  And  so  the  popular  masses,  having  lost  all 
respect  for  those  above  them,  for  laws,  legislators,  and  magis¬ 
trates,  and  having  been  moreover  systematically  trained 
for  several  generations  to  connect  religion  with  all  the  vices 
and  oppressions  of  royalty  and  nobility, — rose  at  length,  in 
a  moment  of  deep  and  general  distress,  and  were  let  loose 
by  their  wily  leaders  upon  the  governing  classes, — sweeping 
away  in  a  deluge  of  blood  every  institution  in  Church  and 
State. 


j Evil  Example  at  Our  Own  Doors. 

Have  we  not  warning  examples  nearer  still  to  our  own  day, 
to  our  own  homes  %  Suppose, — in  the  freest  country  under 
the  sun,  and  amid  all  the  mineral  and  agricultural  wealth, 
all  the  most  splendid  industrial  and  commercial  resources 
that  God’s  fatherly  providence  can  bestow  as  a  heritage  on 
a  people, — suppose  that  the  sole  purpose  of  gaining  sudden 
wealth  becomes  the  mainspring  of  action  in  the  men  who 
monopolize  the  nomination  of  candidates  for  every  office, 
national,  State,  municipal ;  that  the  amassing  of  wealth  by 
the  use  of  official  patronage  and  legislative  action  becomes 
the  darling  aim  of  office-holders  and  legislators  ; — suppose 
that  corruption  on  the  one  hand,  and  venality  on  the  other, 
in  a  great  State,  is  carried  on  so  scientifically  and  success¬ 
fully  as  a  trade  by  one  bold  bad  man,  that  the  entire 
administration,  legislature,  and  judiciary  seem  devised  to 
secure  immunity  in  plundering  the  public, — and  that  this 
systematic  plunder  is  carried  on  for  years,  while  the  para- 


EVIL  PROPAGATED  BY  FAMILIARITY. 


357 


lyzed  arm  of  the  law  is  powerless  to  arrest  the  malefactor, 
and  a  depraved  public  opinion  only  feebly  denounces  the 
enormity, — will  the  evil,  think  you,  stop  with  one  man,  or  be 
confined  to  one  locality,  or  to  one  department  only  of  the 
public  business,  or  one  sphere  of  private  enterprise  ? 

Peculation  carried  on  in  the  halls  of  legislation  or  in  the 
departments  of  government  whenever  vast  commercial  or 
industrial  enterprise  call  for  the  highest  legislative  or  ad¬ 
ministrative  action, — will,  if  unvisited  with  condign  punish¬ 
ment,  be  imitated  in  every  corporation  throughout  the  land. 

Let  one  public  officer  trusted  for  years  with  the  custody 
of  large  funds  or  the  management  of  vast  moneyed  interests, 
betray  his  trust,  and  be  only  so  feebly  punished  by  the  law 
or  so  lightly  whipped  by  public  opinion, — and  you  will  find 
the  example  presently  imitated  all  over  the  land.  If  the 
municipality  that  should  guard  sacredly  and  vigorously 
economize  the  interests  and  moneys  of  a  city,  prove  faithless 
to  their  trust,  will  the  bank  in  which  the  poor  man  deposits 
the  savings  of  his  hard-earned  wages,  be  more  faithful,  more 
conscientious  ? 

t 

And  if  the  clerk  who  keeps  the  books,  or  the  agent  who 
collects  the  funds  of  any  one  private  merchant,  sees  men, 
placed  above  him  in  the  hierarchy  of  official  trustworthi¬ 
ness,  shameless  and  secure  in  their  peculations, — will  he  not 
be  tempted  by  these  examples,  to  go  and  do  likewise  ? 

No  !  there  is  no  hope  for  public  morality,  where  the  high¬ 
est  personages  in  the  community  show  by  their  conduct 
that  they  take  no  account  of  honor,  of  principle,  of  con¬ 
science, — of  the  fear  of  God  and  the  dearest  rights  of  others, 
when  they  have  the  hope  and  the  means  of  gratifying  their 
cupidity. 

And  one  of  the  most  deplorable  results  of  the  unrestricted 
freedom  of  the  public  press,  is  to  make  these  instances  of 
dishonesty  and  triumphant  fraud  familiar  to  every  home,  to 
every  child  in  the  land, — thereby  taking  away  from  the  in¬ 
nocent  mind  of  childhood  the  impression  that  dishonor  is  a 
something  rare  and  frightful,  and  that  the  men  who  hold 
the  place  and  fulfill  the  functions  of  the  fathers  of  their 


358 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


country,  are  untainted  with  the  sordid  vices  of  the  thief  and 
the  low  cheat. 

It  is  a  sad  day  for  any  people,  when  the  divine  precept 
“  Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother,” — becomes  one  of 
practical  impossibility,  because  those  on  whom  its  obli¬ 
gation  falls,  as  they  look  inside  their  home  and  abroad 
throughout  the  land,  find  it  difficult  to  reverence  those, 
who,  while  bearing  the  responsibilities  of  fatherhood,  bear 
also  stamped  on  their  brows  and  their  lives  the  brand  of  in¬ 
delible  dishonor. 

How  many  children  do  we  not  see  in  the  homes  made 
wealthy  by  the  plunder  of  the  public  treasury,  or  the  be¬ 
trayal  of  private  trust,  who,  instead  of  holding  down  their 
heads  in  shame,  or  deeming  it  imperative  not  to  enjoy  or 
retain  a  shilling  of  the  ill-gotten  gain  of  a  father, — will  con¬ 
tinue  to  brazen  it  out,  to  marry  and  give  in  marriage,  to  con¬ 
sort  on  a  footing  of  equality  with  their  former  acquaint¬ 
ance, — as  if  the  wealthy  classes  of  the  community  were  the 
immediate  descendants  of  a  penal  colony  of  thieves,  swin¬ 
dlers,  forgers,  and  pickpockets,  with  whom  the  u  profes¬ 
sional  cleverness”  of  their  fathers  was  rather  a  thing  to  be 
cherished  and  honored  in  the  possessor,  than  a  title  to  dis¬ 
honor  and  exclusion  % 

Debasement  of  Public  Character. 

It  is  not  to  the  praise  of  a  nation  when  it  ceases  “  to  visit 
the  iniquity  of  the  fathers  upon  the  children,  upon  the 
third  and  fourth  generation.”  It  would  be  a  false  and  fatal 
mercy,  a  most  baneful  liberality,  that  would  set  up  in  the 
lowliest  or  in  the  highest  home  in  the  land,  any  other  ideal 
of  ancestral  honor  or  of  the  priceless  inheritance  of  an  un¬ 
spotted  name,  than  that  which  has  been  revered  before  us, 
since  the  world  was  a  world. 

“  When  Don  Beltram  *  inquires  respecting  the  character 
of  his  son  Don  Garcia,  on  returning  from  the  university, 

*In  La  Verdad  Sospechosa  of  Alascon ; — quoted  by  Digby,  “  Compitum,” 
book  i.,  cb.  ix, 


DISHONESTY  SPREADING  LIKE  LEPROSY. 


359 


and  hears  that  he  has  no  evil  quality,  but  that  of  not  always 
speaking  the  truth,  he  exclaims  :  I  icould  pardon  him  for 
everything  lout  for  that.  I  should  prefer  his  toeing  dead. 
What !  he  utters  what  is  not  true  !  0  honor  !  0  ancestors  ! 
How  am  I  fallen  !  .  .  . 

“  ‘  Garcia,  art  thou  noble  ?  ‘  I  am  your  son,’  replies  the 

young  man. — ‘Is  that  sufficient?’  —  ‘I  think  so.’ — ‘Absurd 
thought !  To  act  nobly,  is  to  be  noble.  Such  is  the  be¬ 
ginning  of  noble  houses.  But  thou,  if  infamous  by  thy 
habits,  art  no  longer  noble.  Paternal  escutcheons,  ancient 
descent — of  what  avail  ?  Thou  noble  !  Thou  art  nothing  ! 
Thou  noble ,  who  utter est  an  untruth  !  Thou  art  nothing. 
Whether  noble  or  plebeian ,  no  one  can  lie  without  being  the 
scorn  of  the  people.  ’  ’ 

What  dishonor  and  infamy  would  such  men  have  deemed 
it  in  their  sons  to  add  to  falsehood,  dishonesty,  betrayal  of 
the  most  sacred  trusts,  the  appropriation  to  one’s  private 
uses  of  the  moneys  confided  to  one’ s  keeping  by  clients,  by 
widows,  by  orphans,  by  the  poor  laborer  seeking  to  provide 
an  independent  home  for  his  dear  ones  ?  Alas  !  alas  !  is  it 
so  uncommon  in  these  calamitous  times,  that  even  members 
of  the  most  honored  of  all  secular  professions, — the  law, — 
should  forget  what  they  owe  to  it  and  to  themselves,  and 
betray  the  trust  of  even  the  widow  and  the  orphan  ?  And 
has  not  the  abasement  of  professional  honor,  this  deadening 
of  private  and  public  conscience,  not  been  the  consequence 
of  evil  example,  set,  at  first,  by  one  placed  high  in  public 
esteem  and  public  trust,  and  acting  downward  and  around  on 
others,  like  leprosy  communicated  to  companies  of  the  no¬ 
blest  and  the  best,  by  drinking  out  of  the  cup  of  some  secret 
leper  who  had  long  sat,  unknown,  at  the  common  board, 
and  grasped  their  hands  in  brotherly  friendship,  and  poi¬ 
soned  the  atmosphere  with  his  very  breath  ? 

Should  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  bring  no 
change  for  the  better  to  the  courses  pursued  in  public  life 
by  the  men  whose  example  is  authority,  the  next  century 
shall  see  but  little  of  the  manhood  which  founded  the  Re¬ 
public  and  first  administered  its  government. 


360 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


“  Weakness  to  resist  gold 
If  weakness  may  excuse, 

Wliat  murderer,  vvliat  traitor,  parricide, 
Incestuous,  sacrilegious,  but  may  plead  it  ? 
All  wickedness  is  weakness.” 


The  Remedy  in  the  Eloquence  of  Good  Example. 

Religion,  love  of  country  and  kind,  the  noble  ambition  to 
transmit  to  one’s  children  the  inheritance  of  an  honored 
name  still  further  increased  by  one’s  own  blameless  life, 
and  the  still  more  noble  ambition  of  making  an  obscure 
name  glorious  by  true  merit,  of  founding  by  one’ s  own  ex¬ 
ertions  the  imperishable  nobility  of  public  virtue  and  pri¬ 
vate  worth, — all  these  motives,  and  many  more  than  these, 
some  even  loftier  than  these  (did  we  dare  to  express  our 
thought  fully)  impel  the  true  man  to  make  it  the  aim  of  his 
life  to  be  to  others,  with  the  assistance  of  divine  grace,  a 
shining  light  in  his  own  generation. 

Those  who  have  traveled  through  Belgium  and  Holland, 
—  known  formerly  as  the  Low  Countries, —  cannot  have 
helped  admiring  the  indomitable  perseverance  and  wonder¬ 
ful  ingenuity  with  which,  during  the  lapse  of  so  many  cen¬ 
turies,  an  entire  people  has  labored  to  win  and  to  preserve 
their  native  land  from  the  inroads  of  the  adjacent  ocean. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era  it  was  little  better 
than  a  vast  morass,  but  the  untiring  labors  of  so  many  gen¬ 
erations  have  now  made  it  one  vast  garden.  Heed  we  say 
that  there  was  a  period  when  the  Republic  was  the  first 
maritime  and  commercial  power  in  the  world  \ 

But  there  is  the  sleepless  and  relentless  ocean  ever  thun¬ 
dering  at  the  gates  of  this  people ;  for  their  country  is,  in 
reality,  like  a  mighty  fortress  evermore  beleaguered  by  a 
still  mightier  foe.  The  slightest  breach  in  the  gigantic 
walls  would  at  once  admit  the  resistless  waters,  and  the 
labor  and  sacrifices  of  ages  would  go  for  nothing. 

In  such  a  country,  then,  it  is  the  duty  and  the  interest  of 
every  man  to  see  to  it  that  the  stupendous  embankments 
which  keep  out  the  sea  shall  be  kept  in  constant  repair ;  it 


PESTILENTIAL  EXAMPLE,  HOW  WITHSTOOD. 


361 


would  be  the  duty  of  every  man,  woman,  and  child  almost, 
if  there  was  a  single  breach  apparent  in  their  wide  extent, 
to  rush  to  the  spot  and  help  repair  the  ruins  and  stop  the 
inflow  of  the  devastating  tide. 

Is  not  this  also  the  case  in  our  own  Louisiana,  where  the 
most  precious  portions  of  the  low-lying  country  have  been 
only  saved  from  the  ravages  of  the  Mississippi  by  the  per¬ 
sistent  labor  of  man  ?  When  some  breach  has  been  made 
by  the  swollen  river  in  the  dikes  or  embankments  that 
guard  the  lowlands  from  inundation, — where  is  the  true 
man  who  does  not  hasten  to  the  scene  of  danger,  to  aid  with 
main  and  might  in  repairing  the  evil  ? 

Surely,  there  are  contagious  moral  disorders  as  resistless 
in  their  spread  as  the  swollen  river  in  its  flow,  as  blind  and 
unsparing  in  their  destruction  as  the  ocean  waves  impelled 
headlong  by  the  utmost  fury  of  the  tempest.  We  have  de¬ 
scribed  two  of  them  in  these  chapters,  and  to  the  ravages 
of  the  last  and  most  destructive,  the  only  preservative  lies 
in  the  withstanding  force  of  good  example. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  family  circle.  Just  as  a  parent’s 

evil  life  is  most  baneful  within  the  home,  as  well  as  outside 

of  it  in  proportion  to  its  social  standing  and  influence,  even 

so  and  exactly  in  the  same  proportion,  is  a  father’s  good 

example  helpful  toward  every  noble  aim  and  deed.  Had 

Providence  permitted  the  virtuous  and  accomplished  son  of 

Louis  XIV.  to  live  and  reign  in  his  father’s  stead,  there  can 

be  little  doubt  but  that  his  pure  life  and  generous  spirit 

of  self-denial  would  have  gone  far  to  repair  the  scandals  of 

his  father’s  reign.  The  economy  which  his  example  would 

have  made  popular,  would  have  become  a  rule  in  every 

noble  household,  and  from  private  life  it  would  have  passed 

into  the  public  administration,  thereby  saving  France  from 

ruin  and  her  people  from  despair  and  the  hatred  of  all 

authoritv. 

%> 

Even  when  the  Great  Dauphin  was  prematurely  cut  off, 
and  his  royal  father  continued  his  career  of  self-indul¬ 
gence  and  ruinous  extravagance, — the  Dauphin’s  worthy 
son,  the  saintly  pupil  of  Fenelon,  would  have  become  the 


362 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


savior  of  the  monarchy  and  his  home  the  model  of  every 
household  within  the  kingdom,  had  not  he  and  his  young 
wife  been  poisoned  by  members  of  their  own  family.* 

As  it  was,  the  regency  of  Philippe  d’ Orleans  surpassed 
in  profligacy  the  preceding  reign,  and  the  tide  of  corruption 
held  on  its  course,  ever  increasing  in  volume  and  velocity,  till 
the  throne  and  Church  of  France  went  down  in  the  deluge. 

Would  you  see  how  the  example  and  devotion  of  one  man 
can  rouse  an  entire  people  to  withstand  and  shake  off  the 
tyranny  of  a  degrading  and  inveterate  vice  %  Then  you  have 
only  to  recall  the  life  and  services  of  Theobald  Mathew. 

In  the  home  itself  nothing  can  be  more  familiar  as  well  as 
consoling  than  to  remember  how  the  life  of  a  father  in  every 
way  worthy  of  the  position  and  character  of  a  Christian 
parent  and  true  man,  will  continue  to  be  for  generations  the 
living  law  and  practical  ideal  of  his  descendants.  Even 
when  these  depart  momentarily  from  the  right  road,  they 
can  easily  be  recalled  to  it  by  the  memory  of  their  ances¬ 
tor’s  goodness,  and  the  authority  of  his  lofty  example. 

This  nobility  of  virtue,  so  honored,  exalted,  and  praised 
by  the  Church  in  all  ages,  is  transmitted  by  a  true  father  to 
his  sons  with  the  name  that  he  bears.  Thereby  to  bear  that 
honored  name, — honored  even  among  a  race  of  peasants  and 
borne  by  them  with  a  pride  that  shrinks  from  a  stain  as 
from  a  something  worse  than  death, — is  to  feel  one’s  self 
bound  to  nobleness  of  sentiment,  of  aim,  and  deed.  This, 
in  the  old  Catholic  lands,  w^as  the  foundation  of  the  popular 
saying,  Noblesse  oblige  (‘ Nobility  obliges’).  Not  alone  in 
the  ancient  provinces  of  Spain,  inhabited  by  the  Basques, 
could  every  husbandman  in  the  country  hamlets,  like  every 
denizen  of  the  cities,  proudly  recall  his  lineage  and  point  to 
the  escutcheon  over  his  door,  but  even  in  other  lands  where 
families  occupied  for  centuries  the  same  homesteads,  though 
far  removed  from  the  pretensions  of  modern  wealthy  abodes, 
the  nobility  of  a  good  name  filled  and  surrounded  every 

*  See  the  article  Marie  Adelaide  de  Savoie,  Duchesse  de  Bourgogne ,  in  Le  Cor - 
respondant  of  the  10th  and  25th  March,  1878. 


SOCIETY  OF  ST.  VINCENT  IDE  PA  EL. 


363 


home  like  an  atmosphere,  and  neighbors  far  and  wide  saw 
above  each  door, — though  no  escutcheon  was  emblazoned 
there, — the  spotless  family  name  inscribed  ;  while  every  man 
and  woman  and  child  who  bore  it  knew  that  it  obliged  them 
to  be  true  to  the  blood  in  their  veins.  You  have  only  to  re¬ 
call  the  example  of  the  Rechabites,  quoted  above,  to  under¬ 
stand  what  we  would  here  inculcate.  Doubtless,  this  glo¬ 
rious  race  of  true  men,  during  all  the  centuries  that  they 
have  been  faithful  to  the  obligations  of  their  ancestral  no¬ 
bility  of  virtue,  bore  on  their  banners  no  emblazoned  shield. 
Houses  they  have  never  built,  and,  therefore,  their  dwell¬ 
ings  had  neither  sculptured  doorway,  nor  escutcheon  of 
marble  or  bronze  to  tell  the  traveler  of  the  possessors’ 
lineage.  All  knew  them  to  be  the  sons  of  Rechab.  That 
unsullied  name  was  a  prouder  patent  of  nobility  than  that 
of  baron,  or  count,  or  duke. 

Hot  undeserving  of  serious  consideration  are  the  w^ords 
of  one  who  knew  the  Rechabites  well  and  could  appreciate, 
in  a  degenerate  age,  their  shining  example  of  inviolable 
fidelity  and  unshaken  constancy. 

“Woe  to  them  that  are  faint-hearted,  who  believe  not 
God ;  and  therefore  they  shall  not  be  protected  by  Him. 
Woe  to  them,  that  have  lost  patience,  and  that  have  for¬ 
saken  the  right  ways,  and  have  gone  aside  into  crooked 
ways.  And  what  will  they  do  when  the  Lord  shall  begin  to 
examine  ?  ”  * 

We  can  never  forget  the  noble  examples  set  by  the  gen¬ 
tlemen  of  the  Society  of  St.  Vincent  of  Paul  in  Paris.  Hot 
content  with  mapping  out  the  whole  of  that  vast  capital, 
and  distributing  it  to  the  conferences  or  district  committees, 
in  order  that  not  one  street  should  be  left  unvisited  by  these 
apostles  of  charity,  and  not  one  needy  home  should  escape 
their  active  beneficence, — they  studied  the  science  of  edify¬ 
ing  by  good  example  much  more  than  the  delicate  art  of 
bestowing  relief  without  distressing  or  humiliating  its  re¬ 
cipient. 


*  Ecclesiasticus,  ii.  15,  16,  17. 


364 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


The  civilized  world  knows  how  fatally  the  skepticism 
of  Voltaire,  aided  by  the  evil  life  of  the  governing  classes, 
had  blighted  the  growth  of  faith  in  the  souls  of  the  labor¬ 
ing  population  in  Paris  and  in  the  surrounding  provinces. 
Then  came  the  fearful  excesses  of  the  French  Revolution, 
in  which  these  classes  actively  participated,  leaving  the 
stain  of  blood  on  so  many  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  ex¬ 
isting  generation.  Of  course,  undying  hatred  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  name  and  of  all  that  related  to  religion  became  a 
household  worship  with  these  parents  and  their  children. 
How  could  they  ever  become  reconciled  to  Religion,  to  her 
worship,  and  her  sacraments  %  Hot  by  the  voice  or  the  min¬ 
istrations  of  the  priest.  Him  they  would  not  listen  to.  By 
the  examples  of  the  noble  men,  men  of  the  world,  soldiers, 
lawyers,  magistrates,  men  of  illustrious  birth,  or  rendered 
illustrious  by  their  talents  and  public  services, — whom  they 
saw  daily  seeking  out  every  form  of  obscure  or  secret  priva¬ 
tion  and  suffering,  and  ministering  to  the  poor  and  sick 
with  supreme  devotedness  and  supreme  delicacy.  When 
they  saw  these  men  on  Sundays  devoutly  assisting  at  Mass, 
or  reverently  approaching  the  Holy  Communion,  their 
hearts  began  to  soften  toward  the  religion  of  their  fathers. 
The  eloquence  of  true  charity  set  forth  beneath  their  eyes 
in  so  many  touching  deeds  of  beneficence,  self-denial,  and 
self-sacrifice,  won  their  hearts,  first,  and  thus  opened  the 
avenue  of  their  minds  to  the  knowledge  of  the  true  faith. 
For, — such  has  been  the  invincible  logic  of  all  ages.  True 
Charity  is  the  divinest  form  of  True  Religion. 

In  the  churches  of  Paris,  as  well  as  of  those  in  the  neigh¬ 
boring  dioceses,  but  very  few  men  comparatively,  at  the  fall 
of  Napoleon  I.,  had  courage  enough  to  be  seen  at  confes¬ 
sion  or  communion.  The  force  of  human  respect  was  so 
great  that  such  as  dared  to  profess  and  practice  what  they 
believed,  had  to  do  so  with  more  or  less  of  secrecy.  The 
yearly  lectures  in  Notre  Dame  given  by  the  two  apostolic 
men  Lacordaire  and  De  Ravignan,  broke  the  force  of  anti- 
christian  opinion  and  custom.  The  latter  it  was  who  made 
the  happy  innovation  of  closing  his  Lenten  course  of  ser- 


THE  ADVANCE  GUARD  OF  CHRISTIANITY. 


365 


mons  by  the  solemn  exercises  of  a  retreat  of  eight  days  in 
favor  of  men  exclusively,  and  closing  on  Easter  Sunday  by 
a  general  communion.  Then  it  was  that  revolutionary  and 
skeptical  Paris  was  given  the  extraordinary  and  edifying 
spectacle  of  beholding  the  thousands  of  men, — the  elite  of 
French  manhood, — who  tilled  the  vast  Cathedral,  pressing 
forward  rank  after  rank,  to  partake  of  the  Bread  of  Life, 
and  to  glorify  the  God  of  their  fathers  by  receiving  ador¬ 
ingly  the  divinest  of  His  gifts. 

Thenceforward  it  became  the  custom  of  the  generous  mem¬ 
bers  of  that  advance-guard  of  Faith  and  Charity,  the  So¬ 
ciety  of  St.  Vincent  of  Paul,  to  send  some  of  their  mem¬ 
bers,  every  Sunday  in  the  year,  to  receive  Holy  Communion 
publicly  in  the  various  churches  of  the  capital  and  in  those 
of  the  surrounding  cities  and  villages,  far  and  near.  General 
officers  of  the  army  and  navy,  the  foremost  members  of  the 
learned  professions,  officials  of  high  rank,  and  men  who 
bore  the  proudest  historic  names  in  Europe,  were  thus  to  be 
seen  giving  forth  the  light  and  warmth  of  their  pious  ex¬ 
amples  in  those  centers  of  Voltairian  unbelief  and  revolu¬ 
tionary  impiety,  where  all  faith  had  been  utterly  killed  in 
souls  by  the  evil  examples  and  teachings  of  the  preceding 
age. 

And  thus  do  they  continue  to  edify  and  build  up  in  the 
France  of  to-day  the  ruin  on  which  desolation  and  despair 
seemed  to  have  settled  as  utterly  as  on  Thebes  and  Mem¬ 
phis,  and  Babylon  and  Nineveh. 

A  Sublime  Instance  of  Self-Sacrifice. 

One  instance  taken  from  the  history  of  a  man  whose  air 
of  childlike  simplicity  and  innocence  remains  impressed  on 
the  soul  of  the  author,  and  whose  fame  as  a  mathematician 
is  only  inferior  to  his  generosity  as  a  Christian,  must  find 
place  here.  It  will  tell  our  readers,  that,  whereas  France  is 
still  fruitful  in  such  heroic  souls,  there  is  sure  ground  to 
hope  for  a  revival  at  some  future  day  of  the  living  and 
chivalrous  faith  of  St.  Louis. 


366 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


Baron  Augustin  Louis  Cauchy  had  been  preceptor  to  the 
Comte  de  Chambord,  or  Henri  V.,  as  he  is  called  by  the 
French  Royalists,  and  had  ever  remained  as  loyal  to  the 
cause  of  legitimate  monarchy  as  he  was  to  his  baptismal 
faith.  No  promise  of  advancement,  no  prospect  of  emolu¬ 
ment  or  honor  could  ever  induce  him  to  swear  allegiance  to 
any  form  of  government  that  was  not  administered  or  sanc¬ 
tioned  by  the  lawful  princes.  Nevertheless,  and  while  win¬ 
ning  the  admiration  of  the  whole  scientific  world,  he  re¬ 
mained  the  most  simple-hearted  and  amiable  of  men,  the 
most  fervent  and  charitable  of  Christians.  Of  course  his 
whole  life  was  devoted  to  good  works.  After  1830  he  was 
never  seen  at  the  courts  of  the  sovereigns  elected  by  the 
French  people,  and  he  was  but  ill  at  ease  in  the  recep¬ 
tions  of  the  legitimist  nobility  to  which  he  belonged  and 
where  his  virtues  and  talents  were  fully  appreciated.  Every 
leisure  hour  was  given  to  Christ  in  the  persons  of  His  poor, 
or  in  the  performance  of  the  most  heroic  works  of  charity. 

As  he  was  daily  thrown  into  the  society  of  the  most 
learned  men  in  France,  being  himself  a  member  of  the  In¬ 
stitute  and  having  filled  the  highest  professorships  in  the 
University,  his  heart  was  continually  saddened  by  the  prac¬ 
tical  unbelief  of  so  many  of  his  colleagues,  the  victims  of  a 
godless  and  anti-Christian  system  of  education.  More  than 
one  of  these  had  been  induced  to  study  the  Christian  reli¬ 
gion,  and  to  embrace  it  heartily,  by  the  pure  life  and  ever- 
active  charity  of  Baron  Cauchy. 

One  young  Academician,  in  particular,  had  won  the  Baron’s 
sympathy.  He  had  been  from  childhood  exposed  to  the 
worst  influences  of  French  infidelity,  and  had  not  the  re¬ 
motest  idea  that  the  Catholic  Religion  or  Christianity  itself 
could  be  anything  else  than  the  worst  enemy  of  science  and 
civilization. 

It  so  happened  that  in  the  summer  of  1857  the  young 
Academician  fell  sick  of  the  small-pox,  the  case  presenting 
such  virulent  symptoms  that  all  the  friends  and  acquaintance 
of  the  young  man  fled  from  him,  leaving  him  to  such  care 
as  hirelings  could  give  him.  Baron  Cauchy  thereupon  re- 


FRIEND  DIES  FOR  FRIEND. 


367 


solved  to  win  that  dear  sonl  to  God  at  the  risk  of  his  own 
life.  So,  he  became  his  friend’s  nurse,  never  leaving  him 
for  a  moment,  and  lavishing  on  him  all  the  loving  and  gen¬ 
tle  care  which  was  to  be  expected  from  one  so  naturally 
noble  and  tender,  but  who  seemed  transformed  into  an  angel 
of  God  in  the  sick-room. 

The  patient  recovered,  gaining  health  of  soul  with  that  of 
the  body.  But  his  savior  died,  having  caught  the  malig¬ 
nant  disease,  and  rejoicing  with  unspeakable  delight  to  see 
his  friend  a  true  believer.  The  spirit  of  the  illustrious  dead 
seems  to  have  passed  into  his  convert ;  for,  ever  since  he 
stood  over  the  grave  of  his  benefactor,  he  has  taken  up  the 
apostlesliip  bequeathed  to  him  by  the  departed. 

All  Paris  heard  the  story  of  that  heroic  death  and  of  the 
conversion  which  was  its  consequence.  No  city  in  the  world 
witnesses  more  of  such  examples  of  all-sacrificng  charity,  of 
angelic  piety  than  Paris  the  Magnificent,  where  the  two  ex¬ 
tremes  of  Goodness  and  Wickedness  are  found  side  by  side 
at  every  step,  where  the  two  great  armies  of  Catholic  charity 
and  anti-social  Hatred  confront  each  other  in  every  street. 
Which  is  to  be  victorious, — the  Love  ever  ready  to  give  its 
all  and  to  lay  down  its  life  for  the  suffering  and  the  needy, 
or  that  Hatred  that  would  sacrifice  all  to  its  unreasoning 
fury  or  its  insatiable  thirst  of  enjoyment  % 


“  What  might  be  done  if  men  were  wise — 

What  glorious  deeds,  my  suffering  brother. 
Would  they  unite  in  love  and  right. 

And  cease  their  scorn  for  one  another! 
Oppression’s  heart  might  be  imbued 
With  kindling  drops  of  loving  kindness, 
And  knowledge  pour,  from  shore  to  shore. 
Light  on  the  eyes  of  mental  blindness. 

All  slavery,  warfare,  lies,  and  wrongs. 

All  vice  and  crime,  might  die  together. 

And  wine  and  corn,  to  each  man  born, 

Be  free  as  warmth  in  sunny  weather. 

The  meanest  wretch  that  ever  trod 
The  deepest  sunk  in  guilt  and  sorrow, 
Might  stand  erect  in  self-respect, 

And  share  the  teeming  world  to-morrow. 


368 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


What  might  be  done  ?  This  might,  be  done. 

And  more  than  this,  my  suffering  brother, — 

More  than  the  tongue  e’er  said  or  sung. 

If  men  were  wise  and  loved  each  other.”* 

Tliis  is  the  mission  of  laymen,  of  men  of  the  world.  We 
need  not  tell  the  true  Christian  man  that  the  wisdom  which 
can  alone  avail  to  light  one  forward  on  the  path  of  such 
urgent  and  arduous  duty,  is  that  which  borrows  her  lamp 
from  Faith,  and  that  the  only  love  capable  of  triumphing 
over  the  armed  battalions  of  Hate,  is  the  charity  born  of 
the  Crucified. 

But  in  order  to  recruit  and  warm  with  a  divine  enthusiasm 
these  armies  of  the  God  of  Charity,  we  priests  must  fire  our 
own  souls  with  that  flame  which  is  more  penetrating,  far- 
reaching,  and  irresistible  than  the  fire  from  heaven  which  the 
winds  bear  about  in  the  thunder-cloud.  Its  overwhelming 
suddenness  and  energy  must  tell  the  nations  that  God  is  in 
the  cloud,  the  whirlwind,  and  the  fire. 

Oh  !  that  alF the  children  of  God  in  this  age  of  reasoning 
unreason,  unbrotherly  humanity,  intolerant  liberty,  and 
most  destructive  progress,  were  vessels  filled  with  the  fer¬ 
vent  spirit  of  the  Gospel  and  the  sweet  odor  of  Christ, — 
how  resistless  would  be  their  every  w^ord  and  example  !  If 
only  all  of  us  who  have  at  heart  the  cause  of  Christ,  and 
with  it  the  cause  of  humanity,  and  the  dearest  interests  of 
country, — would  only  proclaim  aloud  in  our  heart  and  life 
as  well  as  by  our  lips,  that  the  Cross  is  our  banner  and  the 
Crucified  our  sole  chief,  how  the  ideal  of  true  manhood  and 
true  manliness  would  soon  be  gloriously  realized  in  our 

homes,  our  associations,  and  the  whole  outside  world  ! 

. 

“  Who  shall  be  nearest,  noblest,  and  dearest, 

Named  but  with  honor  and  pride  evermore? 

He,  the  undaunted,  whose  banner  is  planted 
On  glory’s  high  ramparts  and  battlements  hoar, 

Fearless  of  danger,  to  falsehood  a  stranger, 

Looking  not  back  when  there’s  duty  before  ! 

He  shall  be  nearest,  he  shall  be  dearest, 

He  shall  be  first  in  our  hearts  evermore  !  ” 


*  Charles  Mackay. 


GOLDEN  WORDS  FOR  GOD'S  WORKERS. 


369 


“  Your  work  may  be  to  bring  considerate  thought 
To  humbler  toilers  in  the  hive  of  men  : 

Yet  take  refreshing  draughts  to  brains  o’erwrought. 

To  careworn,  heart-sick  soldiers  of  the  pen. 

A  mother  mourning  o’er  a  child  departed: 

Or  worse,  pursuing  evil  ways  in  life  : 

You  may  take  comfort  to  the  broken-hearted. 

And  rescue  the  weak  straggler  in  the  strife. 

To  the  repenting,  or  repentant,  sinner 
You  may  bring  light,  and  bid  his  terror  cease  : 

Some  fallen  sister  you  may  seek,  and  win  her 
Into  the  pleasant  paths  of  hope  and  peace. 

You  may  dispel  from  shallow  doubters  doubt, — 

Chaos,  to  which  is  said,  ‘  Let  there  be  light  !  * 

And  guide  the  skeptic  as  he  gropes  about 
In  darkness,  dreaming  of  an  endless  night, 

Where  poverty  and  want  are  tempters  ;  where 
Vice  hath  no  check  from  Comfort ;  none  to  teach ; 
Where  self-inflicted  sorrows  bring  despair — 

Your  Lord  may  let  your  soothing  influence  reach 
Where  more  resistless  tempters  triumph — worse 
Than  want  and  poverty — you  may  be  nigh : 

When  plethora  of  gold  creates  a  curse. 

And  wealth  demands  what  riches  cannot  buy. 

You  may  help  those  who  help  themselves— whose  prayer 
Is  for  God-aided  efforts  ;  who,  believing 
In  self-help,  greatly  think,  and  grandly  dare, 

And  those  more  blest  in  giving  than  receiving  : 

Whose  charity  revives  like  sun -lit  dew  : 

And  adds  to  bread  the  health-boon  of  the  leaven : 
Happy  in  making  happy  ;  ah  !  how  few 
Enjoy  on  earth  the  chiefest  joy  in  Heaven  ! 

Your  task  it  is  to  lead  the  soul  to  God  ! 

Teaching  to  bless  His  staff  and  kiss  His  rod  !  ”  * 


*  Samuel  Carter  Hall,  “  The  Trial  of  Sir  Jasper.” 


24 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


THE  PROFESSIONAL  MAN. 

Here  were  men  devoted  to  a  supernatural  end,  even  in  tlie  legal  profession — 
men,  consequently,  like  Sir  Thomas  More,  ready  to  mount  the  scaffold  rather 
than  contradict  it  by  denying  the  Spiritual  Supremacy  of  the  Pope,  or  assenting 
to  any  heresy  which  a  tyrant  or  an  absurd  people  might  propose — men  like 
Felix,  the  great  magistrate,  described  by  Sidonius  Apollinaris,  ...  “a  man  of 
constant  friendship,  and  who  exalted  his  rank  by  his  humility” — men  such  as 
D’Agnesseau  not  only  imagined,  but  knew,  named,  pointed  out.  What  a  broad 
spirit  was  his  (he  says  ;  speaking  of  Langlois),  what  precision  of  thought,  what 
justness— we  might  almost  dare  to  say,  icliat  infallibility  of  reason!  There  was 
nothing  to  exceed  the  soundness  of  his  mind,  unless  it  was  his  heart.  His  house 
had  become  a  happy  asylum  for  learning,  experience,  wisdom,  and  truth  ;  a  kind 
of  temple,  where  sometimes  the  most  important  affairs  of  religion  used  to  be  treated, 
and  where  the  ministers  of  the  altar  were  surprised  to  find  in  a  man  of  the  world, 
not  only  more  light  and  knowledge,  but  even  more  zeal  for  the  purity  of  discipline, 
more  ardor  for  the  glory  of  the  Church ,  than  in  some  who  approached  the  nearest 
to  the  sanctuary. — Digby,  Compitum,  b.  iv.,  ch.  i. 

We  feel,  in  beginning  this  chapter,  as  if  we  were  about 
to  enter  some  holy  place  consecrated  to  Him  to  whom  alone 
belongs  the  perfection  of  all  Holiness,  Truth,  and  Justice  ; — 
a  place  hallowed  not  only  by  the  immemorial  reverence  of 
past  ages,  but  by  the  immediate  presence  of  the  Godhead 
Himself.  There  are  mighty  interests  of  a  threefold  nature, 
of  which  God,  the  creator  of  man,  the  author  of  society, 
and  the  protector  of  social  order  and  happiness,  intrusts  the 
administration  to  a  chosen  few,  and  in  *avor  of  their  kind  : 
the  sacred  interests  of  the  soul  and  the  spiritual  life,  the 
august  interests  of  justice,  law,  and  order,  and  the  scarcely 
less  important  interests  of  bodily  health  and  life  to  be  pre¬ 
served  and  promoted. 

Of  the  priesthood  and  its  duties  we  are  precluded  from 

370 


SACRED  NATURE  OF  THE  JURIST’S  CALLING.  371 

treating  by  the  very  scope  of  our  work ;  of  the  high  and 
important  professions  of  the  Lawyer,  and  the  Physician, 
we  proceed  to  speak,  reserving  to  the  next  chapter  what  re¬ 
lates  to  other  public  avocations. 

I.  The  Lawyer. 

We  need  scarcely  recall  to  Catholics  the  doctrine  of  all 
our  schools  of  theology  on  the  nature  and  origin  of  law  in 
general.  They  teach  that  “law  is  the  divine  will  made 
known  to  rational  creatures,  and  imposing  on  them  the  ob¬ 
ligation  of  doing  certain  things  and  avoiding  others,  under 
pain  of  punishment.”  This  same  will  of  the  Author  of  our 
being  imposes  on  us  in  like  manner  the  obligation  of  obey¬ 
ing  the  laws  enacted  by  the  human  legislator,  who  borrows 
his  authority  from  God,  in  whom  resides  the  supreme  right 
of  compelling  the  wills  of  His  creatures. 

Hence  the  fundamental  principle  admitted  in  all  moral 
theology,  that  just  laws  are  binding  on  the  conscience  on 
account  of  their  conformity  to  the  divine  eternal  law.  Nor 
will  it  be  out  of  place  to  recall  here  the  words  pronounced 
in  our  own  legislative  halls  by  one  whose  memory  must  be 
ever  dear  to  Americans,  *  and  while  contending  for  the  reli¬ 
gious  freedom  guaranteed  by  our  Constitution  : 

“You  make  laws  in  this  hall  of  supreme  temporal  power  ; 
but  then,  can  you  make  them  binding  on  the  consciences  of 
men?  Yes,  with  one  condition.  If  men,  before  your  laws 
are  enacted,  have,  as  a  principle  in  their  hearts,  the  belief 
that  God  sanctions  authority — that  there  is  a  higher  and 
holier  Law-maker  who  gives  sanction  to  your  laws.  Where 
will  you  place  the  security  and  sacredness  of  legislation, 
but  in  this  principle  of  the  necessity  of  an  account  where 
deception  will  be  impossible  ?  ” 

Hence,  also,  in  the  thought  and  language  of  Christian 
Europe  the  close  alliance  between  religion  and  justice,  be¬ 
tween  the  priest  and  the  lawyer,  and  the  parallels  continu- 


*  Archbishop  Hughes  of  New  York. 


372 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


a]ly  drawn  between  their  respective  offices, — the  one  having 
to  minister  at  the  altar  of  the  Living  God  and  to  sit  in  His 
place  as  the  judge  of  consciences,  while  the  other  was  said 
to  minister  in  the  sanctuary  of  justice. 

4 4  Our  old  and  beautiful  French  language,” — says  the 
Count  de  Montalembert, — 4  4  immortal  and  intelligent,  true 
representative  of  the  good  sense  of  our  fathers,  knew  by  a 
wonderful  instinct  to  assimilate  religion  to  justice.  It  wras 
always  said  4  the  temple  of  law,’  4  the  sanctuary  of  justice,’ 
‘the  priesthood  of  the  magistracy.’  We  ought  to  accept 
and  respect  this  synonym,  and  to  take  it  for  our  guide  in 
legislation  ;  preserving  the  dignity  of  what  is  most  august 
in  the  secular  government  of  the  State,  which  is  certainly 
the  administration  of  justice ;  maintaining  inviolable  the 
temple  of  law  and  the  temple  of  God,  the  sanctuary  of  jus¬ 
tice  and  the  sanctuary  of  truth,  the  sacerdotal  character  of 
the  priest,  and  the  priesthood  of  the  judge.”  * 

It  is  a  well-known  matter  of  history,  that  the  Church  from 
the  earliest  ages  not  only  penetrated  with  her  spirit  of  free¬ 
dom,  enlightenment,  and  mercy  the  legislation  of  both  the 
Eastern  and  Western  Empires,  but,  at  the  downfall  of  the 
latter,  established,  encouraged,  and  supported  throughout 
Christendom  the  great  law-schools  which  have  been  the 
fountains  of  modern  legal  science.  She  wTatched  with  equal 
solicitude  over  the  serious  special  studies  necessary,  respec¬ 
tively,  to  the  lawyer  and  the  theologian.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  her  schools  of  medicine. 

Solicitude  of  the  Church  for  the  fegal  Profession . 

In  her  motherly  anxiety  for  the  reign  of  justice  and 
equity  as  distinguished  technically  from  law,  she  enacted, 
whenever  she  could,  rigorous  statutes  against  the  abuses  of 
law-courts  and  the  chicanery  of  practitioners.  Her  con¬ 
stant  endeavor, — it  will  be  found,  on  studying  carefully  the 
annals  of  the  Christian  ages, — wras  to  elevate  the  legal  profes¬ 
sion,  to  glorify  it  in  the  opinion  of  the  people,  and  to  inspire 


*  Quoted  by  Digby. 


QUALITIES  ESSENTIAL  TO  THE  LAWYER.  373 

its  members  with  a  deep  sense  of  religious  self-respect  and  re¬ 
sponsibility.  The  Emperor  Justinian  made  a  special  edict, 
by  which  all  advocates  in  the  imperial  courts  of  law  were 
forced  to  swear  on  the  Gospels,  at  the  beginning  of  every 
trial,  that  they  would  not  plead  a  cause  they  knew  to  be  a 
bad  one,  and  that  they  would  withdraw  from  it  the  moment 
they  discovered  its  injustice.  The  laws  of  Spain  enjoined 
a  like  oath.  In  1274,  Philip  III.,  the  son  of  St.  Louis,  issued 
an  ordinance  to  the  same  effect.  But — what  may  prove  of 
more  interest  to  our  readers— in  1237  the  English  bishops 
assembled  in  council  at  London  decreed  thus  : 

“We  order  that  whoever  desires  to  obtain  the  office  of  a 
lawyer,  ought  to  present  himself  to  the  diocesan,  and  to 
•  take  oath  before  him  that  in  all  causes  in  which  he  is  em¬ 
ployed  he  will  exercise  a  faithful  ministry,  not  delaying  or 
destroying  the  action  of  justice  toward  the  opposite  party, 
but  in  defending  his  client  by  the  laws  and  solid  reasons.”  * 

“We  see  proof,”  says  Digby,  “of  the  prodigious  action 
of  Catholicity  in  rendering  strict,  virtuous,  and  holy  the 
character  of  the  advocate.  When  secular  honors  were  at¬ 
tached  to  the  profession  in  France,  the  knight  of  laws  was 
required  to  swear  that  he  would  never  use  his  insignia  in 
profane  occupations,  but  in  maintaining  the  rights  of  the 
Church  and  the  Christian  faith,  and  in  the  service  of  learn¬ 
ing.  The  French  lawyer,  on  being  inscribed  on  the  roll  of 
advocates,  engaged  never  to  undertake  just  and  unjust 
causes  alike,  without  distinction,  nor  to  maintain  any  with 
tricks,  fallacies,  and  misquotations  ;  he  was  not  to  set  too 
high  a  price  upon  his  services  ;  he  was  not  to  lead  a  dissi¬ 
pated  life,  or  one  contrary  to  the  modesty  and  gravity  of 
his  calling.  He  was  not,  under  pain  of  being  disbarred,  to 
refuse  his  services  to  the  indigent  and  oppressed.  In  the 
Mirroir  des  Justices ,  written  in  the  reign  of  Edward  II.,  it 
is  laid  down  that  a  pleader  or  lawyer  must  be  a  person  ‘  re¬ 
ceivable  in  judgment,  no  heretic,  nor  excommunicate  man. 
He  is  to  be  charged  by  oath  that  he  will  not  maintain  nor 
defend  what  is  wrong  or  false  to  his  knowledge ;  he  is  to 


*  Matthieu  Paris,  ad  annum  1237, — quoted  by  Digby. 


374 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


put  in  before  the  court  no  delays  nor  false  evidence,  nor 
move  nor  offer  any  corruptions,  deceits,  nor  consent  to  any 
such.’  ”  * 

This  much  will  suffice  to  show  the  aim  of  the  Great 
Mother  of  nations  both  in  so  guarding  against  abuses  the 
profession  of  the  law,  that  its  administration  should  ever 
result  in  upholding  right  and  righting  wrong,  and  in  direct¬ 
ing  the  ministers  of  justice  with  such  jealous  care,  that  no 
stain  could  fall  on  their  ermine. 

The  present  Need  of  a  thorough  Legal  Training. 

At  an  epoch  when  there  is  a  general  tendency  toward 
lowering  the  traditional  sacredness  of  the  administration  of 
justice,  and  of  substituting  a  hasty  and  superficial  legal  edu-  * 
cation  for  the  long  and  thorough  preparation  required  in 
the  days  of  our  fathers, — it  may  not  be  inopportune  to  say 
a  few  words  of  encouragement  to  such  as  refuse  to  follow 
the  short  and  easy  path  to  the  place  and  profits  of  the  juris¬ 
consult,  the  magistrate,  or  the  pleader.  With  the  same 
earnestness  with  which  we  should  urge  thoroughness  in  the 
education  of  the  priest,  we  now  plead  for  it  in  the  training 
of  the  lawyer.  And  just  as  we  are  thrilled  with  gratitude 
and  delight  when  we  hear  of  our  venerable  ecclesiastical 
superiors’  conscientious  efforts  to  raise  higher  and  still 
higher  the  standard  of  excellence  in  their  preparatory  semi¬ 
naries  and  schools  of  theology,  even  so  do  we  bless  God 
when  we  learn  of  the  establishment  and  success  of  Law 
Schools  where  professors  and  pupils  vie  with  each  other  in 
conscientious  zeal  to  make  of  the  noble  science  they  aim  at 
mastering,  a  something  divine  to  be  worshiped  and  honored 
by  life-long  devotion,  f 

*  “Compitum,”  b.  iv.,  cli.  i. 

f  We  know  the  distinguished  and  devoted  men  who  have  given  such  fame  to 
the  Law-School  of  Laval  University,  Quebec,  and  have  seen  several  of  the  emi¬ 
nent  lawyers  who  have  honored  their  masters  by  their  incorruptible  integrity 
more  even  than  by  their  legal  knowledge  and  forensic  eloquence.  We  pray  that 
in  the  Montreal  Law- School,  the  same  excellence  may  ever  reign,  and  the  same 
success  attend  the  graduates  !  The  noble  rivalry  which  should  exist  between 
the  parent  university  and  its  offshoot,  should  only  produce  a  higher  common 


QUALITIES  ESSENTIAL  TO  THE  LAWYER. 


375 


The  Lawyer 9  s  Ideal. 

It  cannot  be  too  lofty.  The  science  which  is  necessary, 
both  to  the  advocate  and  the  judge, — to  say  nothing  of  the 
legislator, — is  not  only  exalted  in  its  nature,  but  vast  in  its 
extent,  and  as  exact  in  its  every  detail  as  its  matters  are 
most  perplexing  in  their  multitude  and  variety.  Much 
more  even  than  priestly  science, — comjjrising  the  reasoned 
knowledge  of  dogmatic  and  moral  theology,  of  canon  law, 
conciliary  jurisprudence,  and  ecclesiastical  history,  of  the 
Sacred  Scriptures  and  the  languages  which  serve  as  a  key 
to  their  study  ; — the  science  of  jurisprudence  not  only  bor¬ 
rows  much  from  theology  and  its  cognate  branches,  but  it 
ranges  over  the  entire  framework  of  society,  the  relation  of 
man  toward  man  in  the  city,  and  the  nation, — and  those  of 
each  nation  toward  the  entire  human  race.  There  is  no 
science  comparable  to  that  of  the  accomplished  lawyer — the 
jurist — in  the  vast  and  complex  range  of  its  subject-matter  ; 
none  superior  to  it,  save  theology  alone,  in  the  sacredness 
and  vital  importance  of  the  interests  with  which  it  deals  in 
practice. 

We  cannot,  then,  be  surprised  that  the  Catholic  Church 
which  had  received  from  the  expiring  Roman  civilization 

ideal  and  a  more  triumphant  result, — just  as  the  commingling  of  the  mighty 
waters  of  the  Ottawa  with  those  of  the  St.  Lawrence  forms  a  deeper,  wider, 
and  nobler  stream,  enriching,  adorning,  and  glorifying  a  land  so  full  of  the 
noblest  promise  for  all  future  time. 

Just  as  we  write, — to  our  unspeakable  satisfaction, — come  the  tidings  that 
Georgetown  College  is  about  to  crown  all  its  past  priceless  services  to  our  Catho¬ 
lic  youth  by  perfecting  its  Law-School  and  Medical  School,  and  taking  mea¬ 
sures  to  secure  to  our  country  the  advantages  of  a  great  university  complete  in 
its  every  department.  So  the  Society  of  Jesus  in  the  United  States,  the  illus¬ 
trious  Society  of  Saint  Sulpice  in  Montreal,  and  that  noble  band  of  devoted 
priests,  revered  throughout  Canada  as  the  “  Seminary  of  Quebec,” — join  hands 
and  hearts  to  endow  the  youth  of  America  with  schools  worthy  of  the  brightest 
ages  of  Christian  civilization.  Who  can  doubt  of  God’s  blessing  on  them  ? 

“  Walk  in  joy  .  .  . 

Made  free  by  love  ;  a  mighty  brotherhood 
Linked  by  a  jealous  interchange  of  good, 

A  glorious  pageant  more  magnificent  than  conqueror’s  return.” 


376 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


the  inheritance  of  its  grand  system  of  legislation  and  juris¬ 
prudence,  should  have  cherished  this  heirloom  with  a  re¬ 
ligious  care,  and  deemed  the  knowledge  of  law  and  the 
administration  of  justice  second  only  in  dignity  and  im¬ 
portance  to  the  guardianship  of  the  divine  Deposit  of  Reve¬ 
lation  and  the  sacred  functions  of  the  Christian  priesthood. 

In  France,  where  all  that  pertained  to  the  study  of  law 
and  the  administration  of  justice  was  ever  held  in  singular 
honor, — the  “  worship  of  Justice,”  its  “  temples,”  and  its 
“ priesthood,”  were  not  empty  words:  the  popular  lan¬ 
guage  expressed  notions,  convictions,  and  sentiments  deeply 
rooted  in  the  souls  of  the  people.  Not  even  the  wholesale 
ruin  wrought  in  all  the  ancient  institutions  of  Christian 
France, — and  in  the  constitution  of  her  law-courts,  parlia¬ 
ments,  and  magistracy,  more  than  in  any  other, — has  been 
able  to  obliterate  from  the  minds  of  her  people  the  idea 
that  Justice  is  a  something  divine,  and  that  her  ministers 
are  specially  consecrated,  and  separated  by  their  character 
and  functions  from  the  lay  multitude.  Besides,  the  sacred¬ 
ness  of  their  functions  and  the  eminence  of  the  dignity  they 
held  in  the  estimation  of  all  classes,  caused  the  members  of 
the  judiciary  to  be  accounted  noble :  hence  the  distinction 
of  noblesse  cV  epee  (nobility  or  aristocracy  of  the  sword)  and 
noblesse  de  robe  (nobility  of  the  judicial  robes  or  ermine). 

We  must  not  pursue  this  analogy  beyond  the  limits  of 
France  and  into  the  constitutions  and  customs  of  other  coun¬ 
tries.  Even  to  the  present  day  England  rejoices  in  raising 
to  the  peerage  the  most  eminent  among  her  judges  ;  and  of 
those  who  have  honored  the  high  office  once  graced  by  the 
martyred  Sir  Thomas  More,  several  within  the  century  had 
been  born  in  the  lowliest  station.  It  is  old  Catholic  tra¬ 
dition  holding  on  its  steady  course  in  spite  of  religious 
and  political  changes, — like  the  White  Nile  above  Fachoda, 
disappearing,  to  the  eye  of  the  careless  observer,  beneath 
a  dense  and  impenetrable  growth  of  papyrus  and  other 
aquatic  plants,  but  pursuing  still  its  way  to  the  ocean.* 


*  See  Scliweinfurth,  “  The  Heart  of  Africa,”  i.,  chap.  iii. ;  and  Sir  Samuel  \V. 
Baker,  “  Ismailia,”  chap.  iii.  54  (New  York  ed.). 


THE  MAGISTRATE  ENNOBLED  BY  PUBLIC  OPINION  377 


The  Church  herself  more  than  once  manifested  the  high  es¬ 
teem  in  which  she  held  lawyers,  one  of  them,  Guy  Foucjuef, 
being  elected  to  the  chair  of  St.  Peter,  in  1265,  under  the 
name  of  Clement  IY. 

For  the  instruction  of  lawyers  themselves  this  much  may 
be  deemed  more  than  sufficient  on  the  high  dignity  of  their 
profession.  Less  we  could  not  say  for  the  interest  of  the 
general  reader.  What  shall  we  say  of  the  mighty  issues 
that  depend  on  their  professional  skill,  their  uprightness, 
and  conscientious  devotion  to  their  clients  \ 

Interests  Intrusted  to  Lawyers. 

Lawyers  are  intrusted  with  the  fortunes  and  the  honor  of 
families,  as  well  as  with  the  liberty  and  life  of  individuals. 
On  the  professional  virtues  of  no  one  class  in  the  community 
does  so  much  of  its  temporal  happiness  depend  as  on  the 
men  who  undertake  to  defend  and  vindicate  right  against 
wrong  before  the  august  tribunals  of  justice.  On  no  class 
does  it  depend  so  largely,  so  exclusively  even,  to  bring  jus¬ 
tice,  law,  authority  into  contempt,  or  to  make  these  venera¬ 
ble  names  still  more  sacred  in  the  esteem  of  all  classes. 

The  profound  respect  which  the  writer  has  ever  enter¬ 
tained  both  for  the  bench  and  the  bar,  induces  him  to  hold 
up  here  to  the  entire  legal  body, — to  such  at  least  as  share 
his  own  religious  faith, — the  mirror  of  one  noble  life,  that 
of  a  man  whose  memory  is  still  fondly  cherished  in  his 
native  country,  and  who  deserved  to  be  the  parent  of  one 
of  Spain’s  most  saintly  and  accomplished  daughters.* 

Diego  de  Escobar  was  an  advocate  in  the  royal  court  of 
chancery  at  Valladolid,  and  professor  of  civil  and  canon 
law  in  the  University  of  Salamanca.  His  extreme  delicacy 
of  conscience,  however,  caused  him  to  give  up  practicing  in 
the  law-courts  after  a  brief  career  of  extraordinary  bril¬ 
liancy.  Thenceforward  he  devoted  himself  to  the  duties  of 
his  professorship,  charming  and  edifying  the  numerous 
youth  of  the  university  by  his  gentleness,  his  childlike  sim- 


*  The  venerable  Marina  de  Escobar. 


378 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


plicity,  and  spotless  purity  of  life  much  more  even  than  by 
his  uncommon  learning  and  eloquence.  In  the  Latin  bio¬ 
graphy  of  his  daughter  is  contained  a  brief  4  Rule  of  Life  ’ 
which  this  exemplary  Christian  had  drawn  up  for  himself, 
and  which  is  here  submitted  to  the  reader.  ‘ 4  My  first  care 
shall  be,  when  I  rise  in  the  morning,  to  say  my  prayers  and 
invoke  the  Blessed  Virgin,  then  go  to  hear  Mass,  and,  on 
festivals,  to  the  Sermon,  which  I  shall  listen  to  attentively 
and  devoutly,  beseeching  our  Lord  to  give  me  grace  to 
serve  Him.  I  am  resolved,  wherever  I  may  be,  not  to  as¬ 
sent  to  or  countenance  murmuring,  to  prevent  and  reprove 
swearing,  to  give  good  advice,  to  pardon  offenses,  and, 
above  all  to  suffer  and  bear  with  unruffled  soul  insults,  af¬ 
flictions,  and  ill  fortune  ;  also  daily  to  visit  some  sick  per¬ 
son,  consoling  and  assisting  him  to  the  best  of  my  power ; 
also  to  visit  those  in  affliction,  in  order  to  comfort  them  ;  to 
follow  the  dead  to  their  last  resting-place;  to  give  alms 
cheerfully  to  every  one  who  asks  from  me  ;  to  entertain 
hospitably  the  homeless  poor  whom  I  may  meet  on  the 
roads  or  public  places,  and  to  give  them  food  and  drink  and 
clothing,  considering  that  in  their  persons  I  receive  into  my 
house  Christ,  who  is  present  in  the  poor — to  take  care  that 
no  one  leaves  me  sad  and  desolate,  but  rather  joyful  and  re¬ 
freshed  ;  to  wear  sackcloth  or  a  rope  next  my  flesh,  to  take 
the  discipline  once  a  week,  to  fast  not  only  on  the  pre¬ 
scribed  days,  but  also  on  the  vigil  of  every  feast  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin,  and,  if  I  can,  on  the  Fridays  ;  to  endeavor 
as  far  as  I  can  to  hinder  litigation,  and  to  apply  myself  dili¬ 
gently  to  this  purpose  ;  not  to  act  tyrannically  with  persons 
going  to  law,  but  to  speak  to  them  courteously  and  in  a 
friendly  manner  ;  to  dictate  lectures  to  my  pupils  for  their 
especial  benefit ;  in  fine  to  meditate  on  the  life  and  passion 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  to  be  grateful  to  God  for  the 
benefits  I  receive  from  Him,  and  to  love  Him  for  His  good¬ 
ness.”  * 

Do  not  say  that  the  mirror  of  such  a  life  reflects  an  ideal 


*  Vita  Venerdbilis  Virginia  Marina  de  Escobar,  lib.  i.,  c.  1. 


THE  ROYAL  ROAD  OF  JUSTICE. 


379 


too  superhuman,  too  far  above  the  low  level  of  what  mod¬ 
ern  society  esteems  as  excellent  and  exemplary.  You, 
men  of  the  world,  are  still  Christian  men,  men  who  believe 
in  supernatural  virtue  and  supernatural  grace  as  a  help 
toward  such  virtue  ;  you  believe  also  in  the  necessity  for 
all  who  would  have  a  share  with  Christ  to  be  Chris tlike, 
and,  therefore,  supernatural.  Would  you  forgive  a  priestly 
teacher,  writing  on  such  deeply  practical  matters,  to  address 
you  as  men  who  only  believed  in  naturalism, — the  worship 
of  mere  natural  excellence,  to  the  exclusion  of  all  the  di¬ 
vine  forms  of  goodness  and  greatness  so  familiar  to  our 
fathers  ? 

Why  the  Lawyer ’  s  Ideal  must  be  Supernatural . 

No !  In  the  consciousness  of  our  own  innate  weakness 
amid  the  general  abasement  of  morals  and  manners  around 
us,  we  must  not  drift  unresistingly  downward  with  the 
current,  but  lift  our  eyes  and  hands  and  hearts  upward  to 
the  eternal  hills  where  is  our  Hope  and  Helper, — as  well  as 
our  Model.  The  vision  of  One  thorn-crowned  and  treading 
the  steep  road  of  Calvary  beneath  His  heavy  cross,  is  never 
to  be  lost  sight  of.  We  are  His  disciples  and  followers. 
Hence  it  is  that  in  all  Catholic  countries, — all  throughout 
Christendom,  indeed,  before  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century, — the  image  of  Christ  crucified  wTas  hung  up  on 
the  wall  full  in  view  of  the  judges’  bench, — as  if  He  it 
was  who  presided  at  the  administration  of  justice,  as  if 
lawyers  and  judges  felt  bound  to  be  guided  in  the  practice 
of  their  noble  profession  by  His  spirit  and  His  maxims, — 
tempering  all  human  justice  and  law  with  His  Mercy  and 
Charity. 

We  remember,  in  visiting  the  Palais  de  Justice  at  Paris, 
to  have  seen,  in  the  magnificent  hall  called  Salle  des  Pas 
Perdus  a  large  crucifix  suspended  from  the  wall.  Palace, 
hall,  and  crucifix  have  since  been  swept  away  by  the 
drunken  fanatics  of  the  Commune, — the  worthy  represen¬ 
tatives  of  our  modern  naturalists  and  levelers. 


380 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Our  lawyers  and  our  judges,  however,  will  only  be  all  the 
more  worthy  of  the  name  they  bear,  all  the  more  honored 
and  blessed  of  those  who  need  impartial  human  justice, — if 
they  bear  with  them,  impressed  on  their  hearts  and  their 
lives  the  likeness  of  Christ  crucified.  They  must  follow 
Him  !  And  we  should  fail  in  our  assumed  duty  did  we  not 
tell  them  so. 

“  The  bird  hath  not  known  the  path, 

Neither  hath  the  eye  of  the  vulture  beheld  it. 

The  children  of  the  merchants  have  not  trodden  it, 

Neither  hath  the  lioness  passed  by  it.”  * 

W e  have  been  privileged  to  know  and  to  live  with  some  of 
the  best,  the  saintliest,  the  most  lovable,  and  the  most  ac¬ 
complished  of  Christian  men  ;  but  none  of  the  dear  and  ven¬ 
erable  forms  so  familiar  to  us  in  youth  and  mature  life  ever 
effaced  the  sweet  images  of  these  two  ornaments  of  the  Bar 
and  Bench  of  Lower  Canada,  Justices  Panet  and  Morin,  to 
each  of  whom  every  word  written  for  his  own  guidance  by 
Diego  de  Escobar  might  be  literally  applied. 

Of  this  Royal  Way  of  the  Cross,  followed  by  all  such 
true  men,  we  can  say  with  one  who  was  in  his  day  the  won¬ 
der  of  the  Roman  world,  the  master  and  guide  of  great  law¬ 
yers  and  illustrious  orators:  “This  is  the  religion  which 
possesses  the  universal  way  for  delivering  the  soul ;  for,  ex¬ 
cept  by  this  way,  none  can  be  delivered.  This  is  a  kind  of 
royal  way,  which  alone  leads  to  a  kingdom  which  does  not 
totter  like  all  temporal  dignities,  but  stands  firm  on  eternal 
foundations.”  j* 

This  Royal  Road  is  the  Highway  of  Honor . 

One  word  to  ail  members  of  the  Bar  on  this  right-royal 
highway  of  Christian  honor,  and  on  the  dishonorable  and 

*  Job,  xxviii.  7,  8. 

f  St.  Augustine,  De  Civitate  Dei ,  1.  x.,  c.  32:  Haec  est  religio  qua  univer Sa¬ 
lem  continet  viam  anima  liberandce ;  quoniam  nulla  nisi  hac  liberaH  potest. 
Hate  est  enim  quodammodo  Regalis  Via,  quce  una  ducit  ad  regnurn ,  non  tempo - 
rali  fastigio  nutabundum,  sed  aternitatis  Jirmitate  securum. 


ANCIENT  CONFRATERNITIES  OF  LAWYERS. 


381 


degrading  tendencies  from  whicli  it  is  the  deep  interest  of 
all  that  the  profession  of  the  law  should  be  “  delivered” 
and  preserved.  St.  Louis,  King  of  France,  was,  among 
other  mighty  cares,  so  anxious  that  no  suspicion  of  wrong¬ 
doing  should  attach  itself  to  the  administration  of  justice 
within  his  kingdom,  that  he  built  what  is  known  as  La 
Salute  Chapelle  (“The  Holy  Chapel”),  by  the  side  of  the 
central  court  of  justice  in  Paris,  placing  within  this  most  ex¬ 
quisite  of  all  existing  church  edifices  the  Crown  of  Thorns 
worn  by  our  Lord,  and  which  the  holy  king  had  brought 
with  him  from  Palestine.  There,  daily,  judges  and  advo¬ 
cates  were  wont  to  assist  devoutly  at  the  Holy  Sacrifice,  be¬ 
fore  proceeding  to  their  usual  avocations, — the  presence  of 
the  diadem  of  shame  worn  by  the  King  of  Kings  in  His  pas¬ 
sion,  and  the  celebration  of  the  most  august  of  their  reli¬ 
gion’s  mysteries  serving  as  an  eloquent  exhortation  to  the 
conscientious  discharge  of  their  august  office. 

In  this  same  sanctuary  all  the  members  of  the  Bar  formed 
a  pious  brotherhood,  bound  together,  not  by  the  common 
purpose  of  promoting  their  own  worldly  or  pecuniary  inter¬ 
ests,  or  of  protecting  prevarication  or  wrong-doing  or  in¬ 
competence,  against  those  above  or  below  themselves,  but 
by  the  sincere  and  firm  design  of  saving  their  professional 
robes  from  even  the  slightest  stain  of  dishonesty,  of  guard¬ 
ing  their  clients  from  the  possibility  of  wrong,  and  of  fur¬ 
thering  to  the  best  of  their  power  the  interests  of  their  de¬ 
pendents  and  the  cause  of  impartial  justice.  Their  model 
was  a  Frenchman,  Sulpicius  Severus  (died  410),  held  as  a 
saint  in  some  parts  of  France,  and  who  was  equally  studious 
of  the  interests  of  justice  and  of  the  science  of  law,  and  as 
zealous  in  putting  a  stop  to  lawsuits  as  he  was  to  urge 
forward  those  he  had  undertaken.*  It  was,  however, 
then,  as  it  has  been  ever  since,  a  hard  struggle  for  fiigh- 
souled  lawyers  against  the  custom  which  prevailed  among 
their  false  brethren  ;  and  France  has  had  her  canonized 

*  Neque  enim  Me  magis  juris  consultus  quam  justitice  fuit ;  neque  instituefe 
litium  actiones  malebat,  quam  controversial  toller e ;  applied  by  Cicero  to  a  con¬ 
temporary  of  the  same  name  as  the  Christian  advocate. 


382 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM \ 


Advocate,  Ivo  de  Kaermartin,  of  whom  is  sung  on  his  feast- 
day  : 

Advocatus,  non  latro, 

Res  miranda  populo. 

“  An  advocate,  yet  not  a  thief, — a  thing  transcending  all  belief.” 

Ancient  and  Modern  “  Picldocks” 

,  The  opposite  character,  the  unprincipled  or  half-educated 
pettifogger, — the  man  of  greed  and  gold, — is  no  new  char¬ 
acter  in  the  world.  The  portrait  made  of  him  in  the  days 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  is  that  of  many  a  man  in  the  days  of 
Queen  Victoria,  and  those  who  might  sit  for  it  abound  on 
both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  : 

“  Here  is  Domine  Picklock, 

My  man  of  law,  solicits  all  my  causes, 

Follows  my  business,  makes  and  compounds  any  quarrels 
Between  my  tenants  and  me  ;  sows  all  my  strifes 
And  reaps  them  too  ;  troubles  the  country  for  me. 

And  vexes  any  neighbor  that  I  please.”  * 

Of  course,  the  men  whose  ignorance,  incapacity,  and  bad 
actions  dishonor  a  noble  profession,  should  never  be  cited 
or  accepted  by  any  enlightened  or  impartial  person  as  the 
fair  representatives  of  that  profession.  It  is  both  illogical 
and  unjust  to  argue  from  the  exceptional  guilty  few  to  the 
innocent  and  upright  many.  The  majority,  however,  in 
any  profession  would  seem,  in  the  judgment  of  the  public, 
to  become  responsible  for  the  conduct  of  a  dishonest  minor¬ 
ity,  when  they  neither  protest  in  a  body  against  open  and 
crying  wrong,  or  when  they  neglect  to  stop  the  abuse  by 
stringent  enactments  and  exemplary  punishment. 

There  are  two  classes  of  persons  toward  whom  members 
of  the  Bar  may  display  the  disinterestedness  and  devotion 
worthy  of  their  calling,  or  that  spirit  of  peculation  which  is 
now* the  bane  of  so  many  courts  of  law  :  the  poor  and  the 
upper  classes.  So  far  as  the  poor  are  concerned,  it  may  suf¬ 
fice  to  hold  up  to  all  the  mirror  of  the  Christian  generosity 
and  charity  practiced  by  lawyers  in  some  Catholic  lands. 


*  Ben  Johnson. 


THE  PATRON  SAINT  OF  LAWYERS. 


383 


We  have  spoken  of  St.  Ivo,  as  the  acknowledged  patron 
of  the  legal  profession.  Perhaps  the  reader  may  wish  to 
know  on  what  grounds  this  Saint  merited  such  a  distinc¬ 
tion.  Ivo  Helori  de  Kaermartin,  was  born  of  an  illustrious 
family  near  Treguier  in  Lower  Brittany  in  the  year  1253. 
He  was  thus  a  contemporary  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  Dante, 
and  Petrarch,  living  in  an  age  of  great  intellectual  activity 
and  culture, — when  the  study  of  law  was  held  in  extraor¬ 
dinary  honor.  He  completed  his  philosophical  and  theo¬ 
logical  course  in  the  University  of  Paris,  and  his  course  of 
canon  and  civil  law  at  Orleans, — the  former  under  the  cele¬ 
brated  canonist  William  de  Blaye,  who  afterward  became 
bishop  of  Angouleme,  and  the  latter  under  Peter  de  la  Cha- 
pelle,  an  eminent  lawyer,  who  became  bishop  of  Toulouse 
and  a  cardinal.  This  elevation  is  one  fact  among  thou¬ 
sands  to  show  in  what  esteem  superiority  in  legal  lore  was 
held  by  the  Church  in  that  age. 

Home  Education  of  the  Chr  istian  Lawyer „ 

lvo  was  blessed  in  having  a  mother  whose  accomplish¬ 
ments  and  piety  enabled  her  to  mold  her  boy’s  soul  to  the 
pursuit  of  the  noblest  aims  and  the  practice  of  the  most 
generous  virtue.  She  labored  early  and  successfully  in  im- 
pressing  him  with  the  conviction  that  he  must  become  a 
supernatural  man  and  a  saint.  This  high  purpose  gave  a 
direction  to  all  his  youthful  studies  and  to  his  career  in 
ripe  manhood.  At  Paris  and  Orleans  he  shone  among  the 
numerous  youth  of  each  university  with  the  twofold  splen¬ 
dor  of  his  uncommon  talent  and  unearthly  purity  of  life. 
Not  that  men  of  saintly  lives  were  then  rare  in  the  great 
schools  of  France,  Germany,  and  Italy, — for  history  attests 
the  contrary ;  but,  as  these  belonged  for  the  most  part  to 
the  great  religious  orders  of  St.  Dominick  and  St.  Francis, 
then  in  the  early  summer  of  their  glorious  prosperity,  the 
union  in  a  young  layman  and  a  law  student  of  the  highest 
gifts  of  intellect  and  the  most  exalted  piety  was  a  thing 
even  then  deserving  of  admiration. 


384 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Both  in  Paris  and  in  Orleans  the  noble  youth  was  remark¬ 
able  for  his  rigorous  abstemiousness,  never  tasting  wine  or 
anything  intoxicating,  abstaining  even  from  the  use  of  flesh 
meat,  strictly  observant  of  the  fasts  of  the  Church,  and 
giving  to  sleep  the  shortest  space  he  could.  But  he  gave 
most  of  his  spare  time  to  visiting  the  poor  and  sick  in  the 
hospitals,  where  his  presence  was  ever  like  a  sunbeam. 

The  Advocate  of  the  Poor. 

He  had  made  a  secret  vow  of  perpetual  virginity  ;  and  this? 
while  disposing  him  to  enter  the  service  of  the  Church  at  a 
later  date,  made  him  refuse  the  most  tempting  offers  of  mar¬ 
riage.  Indeed,  the  birth,  the  surpassing  talent  and  elo¬ 
quence  of  the  young  lawyer,  as  well  as  his  growing  reputa¬ 
tion,  opened  to  him  the  doors  of  the  best  families  and  the 
avenue  to  the  highest  dignities  in  the  State.  He  was,  how¬ 
ever,  wholly  devoted  to  his  profession,  devoted  especially 
to  the  poor  and  defenseless.  These  soon  found  out  their 
friend  and  protector ;  and  even  during  this  first  period  of 
his  career,  Ivo  was  known  as  “the  Advocate  of  the  Poor,” 
— a  most  glorious  distinction. 

The  appellation  became  more  especially  his,  when  at  length 
he  was  induced  to  receive  holy  orders.  As,  in  every  diocese 
in  France, — and  indeed  of  all  Western  Christendom, — the 
bishop’ s  court  was  the  one  to  which  the  laboring  poor  loved 
to  appeal  for  justice,  Ivo  was,  immediately  after  his  ordina¬ 
tion,  appointed  “  official,”  or  presiding  officer  at  the  ecclesi¬ 
astical  court  of  Bennes.  Here  he  was  not  permitted  to 
remain  long ;  for  the  Bishop  of  Treguier,  who  claimed  him 
as  his  diocesan,  forced  him  to  accept  the  position  of  ecclesi¬ 
astical  judge  in  his  own  native  city.  He  made  of  his  court 
a  model,  reformed  the  entire  administration  of  justice,  and 
became  the  idol  of  the  people  far  and  near.  For,  not  satis¬ 
fied  with  fulfilling  his  own  duties  as  judge,  he  held  himself 
ever  in  readiness  to  go  to  other  courts  to  plead  the  cause  of 
the  needy  and  the  oppressed. 

Bevered  as  he  was  by  high  and  low,  this  readiness  to 


WHERE  OUR  LAW-COURTS  NEED  MENDING . 


385 


advocate  the  rights  of  the  widow  and  the  orphan,  of  the 
husbandman  and  the  day -laborer,  seemed  to  create  neither 
jealousy  nor  unworthy  rivalry  among  his  brother  lawyers. 
On  the  contrary,  his  deep  knowledge  not  only  of  law  but  of 
human  nature,  his  almost  preternatural  sagacity  in  detect¬ 
ing  guilt  and  following  it  through  all  its  dark  windings, 
and  the  eloquence  which  he  displayed  in  favor  of  the  inno¬ 
cent, — made  him  a  welcome  favorite  everywhere. 

When  his  bishop  forced  him  to  accept  a  pastoral  charge, 
he  displayed  in  his  parish  of  Tresdretz  the  apostolic  virtues 
of  which  he  had  already  given  the  promise  while  a  layman. 
He  was  a  true  father  and  protector  to  his  people,  to  the 
poor  in  particular.  He  built  near  his  own  residence  an 
hospital  and  asylum  for  the  sick  and  the  poor,  in  which 
he  lavished  daily  on  them  all  the  care  of  the  most  tender 
charity.  He  died  at  the  age  of  fifty  in  1303,  mourned  by 
all  Brittany,  and,  indeed,  by  all  France,  so  universally  was 
he  beloved  and  revered.  John  de  Montfort,  Duke  of  Brit¬ 
tany,  went  himself  to  Home  to  solicit  his  canonization,  sol¬ 
emnly  affirming  on  oath  that  he  had  been  cured  by  the 
prayers  of  the  man  of  God  of  a  sickness  pronounced  by  the 
best  physicians  to  be  incurable.  The  examination  into  the 
heroicity  of  his  life  and  virtues  was  begun  in  1337,  and 
completed  ten  years  "afterward,  when  the  name  of  Ivo  was 
placed  on  the  list  of  God’s  most  glorious  servants,  and  the 
19th  of  May,  the  day  of  his  deatji,  was  appointed  as  his 
feast,  thenceforward  to  be  the  great  feast-day  of  Christian 
lawyers  o 

Even  in  England  the  great  Breton  “  Advocate  of  the 
Poor”  was  revered  by  the  people  as  well  as  by  the  members 
of  the  profession  he  had  so  highly  honored  ;  his  name  was 
given  to  churches  and  to  institutions,  and  still  survives  in 
more  than  one  place. 

We  are  only  solicitous  in  thus  glancing  at  so  holy  a  life, 
that  every  true-hearted  lawyer  should  be, — the  advocate, 
the  defender,  the  devoted  and  disinterested  counselor  of  the 
poor. 


25 


386 


TRUE  MEN  A8  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Compare  this  Picture  with  That. 

As  to  rich  and  powerful  clients,  wliat  can  we  say  here, 
while  the  daily  press  is  full  of  the  most  disheartening  and 
disgraceful  tales  of  peculation,  fraud,  and  even  forgery 
committed  by  men, — whose  profession  gives  them  the  rank 
of  gentlemen,  but  whose  deeds  show  them  to  be  worse  than 
the  felons  they  defend  or  help  in  bringing  to  punishment  ? 

Is  it  not  a  terrible  arraignment  of  so  noble  a  profession 
to  hear  it  daily  said,  by  the  organs  of  public  opinion,  in  a 
free  country,  that  some  of  our  courts  of  justice  seem  only 
to  be  organized  for  the  purpose  of  permitting  lawyers  to 
absorb  the  entire  fortune  of  their  ill-starred  clients  during 
the  slow  process  of  a  suit  ?  that  neither  the  judges  on  the 
bench,  nor  the  Bar  as  a  body,  will  dare  or  care  to  interfere 
to  prevent  the  enormous  and  ruinous  fees  levied  on  the 
wretched  contestants  %  that  men  standing  high  in  their  pro¬ 
fession  are  almost  weekly  discovered  to  have  betrayed  the 
trust  of  the  widow,  the  orphan,  the  minor,  or  the  too-con- 
tiding  client,  by  using  the  property  of  the  latter  for  their 
own  personal  profit  \ 

And  then,  the  odious  spectacle  presented  in  certain  crim¬ 
inal  as  well  as  in  certain  civil  suits,  where  the  life  and  repu¬ 
tation  of  the  living, — even  when  compelled  to  give  their 
testimony  as  witnesses,  are  searched  and  held  up  to  the 
prurient  curiosity  of  the  sight-seers  in  the  court  and  of  the 
expectant  millions  outside  !  the  souls  of  the  innocent  and 
the  sensitive,  because  they  are  forced  to  testify,  being  put 
to  tortures  that  would  shame  all  the  judges  and  satellites 
of  the  most  barbarous  inquisitions  of  bygone  ages  !  crimes 
and  hideous  details  of  secret  and  most  loathsome  guilt  re¬ 
hearsed  again  and  again  before  judge  and  jury  and  listening 
public,  and  borne  by  the  press  all  over  the  land  like  the 
seeds  of  the  most  destructive  pestilence,  to  fall  on  the  minds 
and  hearts  of  all-reading  youth  and  childhood  ?  And  we 
wonder  at  the  alarming  growth  of  precocious  depravity  and 
premature  crime, — as  if  any  other  reaping  could  be  expected 
from  such  sowing  !  Even  in  the  age  of  Cicero,  as  the  great 


IDEAL  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  JUDGE. 


387 


lawyer  and  orator  tells  us,  to  good  men  like  Piso,  the  atmos¬ 
phere  of  law-courts  became  intolerable  because  unwholesome 
to  the  moral  sense.  Hominum  inertias  etc  stultitias ,  qua 
detoranda  nobis  sunt ,  non  ferebat :  “He  (Piso)  could  not 
endure  the  improprieties  and  follies  committed  by  the  men 
of  our  profession,  and  which  we  had  to  swallow  patiently.”  * 
What  would  both  Piso  and  Cicero  have  thought  of  the  de¬ 
grading  and  corrupting  spectacle  offered  by  our  law-courts 
daily  for  months  and  months  in  succession,  as  certain  infam¬ 
ous  trials  dragged  their  loathsome  length  along,  or,  as  at  this 
moment,  a  certain  contestation  over  a  wretched  millionaire’ s 
will  enables  the  lawyers  of  his  unnatural  sons  to  exhibit  to 
the  foul  taste  of  reporters  and  readers  every  hideous  detail 
of  their  dead  parent’ s  moral,  mental,  and  bodily  infirmities ! 

We  heard  a  lawyer  express  his  conviction  that  such  trials 
with  their  protracted  displays  of  moral  turpitude  were  as 
useful  and  as  necessary  to  the  young  practitioner  as  the 
lessons  and  exercises  of  the  anatomical  amphitheater  were 
to  the  surgeon  and  physician.  We  beg  to  differ  with  him, 
knowing  that  we  have  on  our  side  the  ripest  talent  and 
most  honored  names  of  the  American  Bar.  Of  the  courts 
of  justice  dishonored  by  such  practice,  and  of  the  wisdom 
therein  acquired,  we  think  with  the  illustrious  Roman  ora¬ 
tor,  “that  it  were  hard  to  say  whether  such  a  school  for 
legal  training,  or  the  men  who  go  thither  to  learn,  or  the 
odious  nature  of  the  lessons  there  taught,  contributes  most 
to  pervert  and  corrupt  the  mind  of  youth.”  f 

The  Judiciary. 

It  is  to  the  upright  and  eminent  men  who  grace  the  judg¬ 
ment-seat  as  well  as  their  high  calling,  that  we  must  look 
for  a  remedy. 

“Nino,  thou  courteous  judge,  wliat  joy  I  felt 
When  I  perceived  thou  Avert  not  with  the  bad  !  ”  :f 


-  Cicero,  “  Brutus,”  n.  G7. 

f  Non  facile  dixerim  ;  wtrumne  locus  ipse,  an  condiscipuli,  an  genus  studiorum 
plus  mali  ingeniis  adferant. — De  OJficiis,  ii.  xiv. 

%  Dante,  “  Purgatorio,”  viii. 


388 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Passing  over  the  necessities  or  political  expediences 
which  have  led  to  making  the  judiciary  elective  in  so  many 
of  our  States,  — lest  we  should  for  a  moment  allow  the  sus¬ 
picion  of  partisan  prejudice  to  rest  on  our  teaching, — we 
hasten  to  say,  that  it  is  in  the  power  of  our  judges  to  do 
much,  very  much,  to  purify  their  own  profession  from  these 
increasing  abuses,  and  to  promote  the  most  vital  interests 
of  the  nation  by  guarding  carefully  the  sacredness  of  the 
legislator’s  trust  and  of  their  own  office. 

In  the  examples  quoted  in  this  chapter, — in  the  lives 
especially  of  such  men  as  St.  Ivo  and  President  Langlois, 
every  true  man  who  has  at  heart  the  immaculate  honor  of 
his  place  and  the  purest  interests  of  justice,  will  find  an 
ideal, — the  loftiest  and  the  most  ennobling. 

There  are,  we  would  fain  believe,  few,  if  any,  among  our 
judges,  who  are  not  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  life 
and  writings  of  the  great  magistrates  who  shed  such  immor¬ 
tal  luster  on  the  ancient  administration  of  justice  in  France, 
and  did  such  glorious  service  in  promoting  various  im¬ 
portant  legal  reforms  as  well  as  in  withstanding  the  arbi¬ 
trary  acts  of  those  in  power.  Think  of  the  great  Chancellor 
D’Aguesseau  (died  1751),  who  was,  according  to  Voltaire 
himself,  “  the  most  learned  magistrate  that  France  ever  pos¬ 
sessed;  ”  and  who,  “  independently  of  his  thorough  ac¬ 
quaintance  with  the  laws  of  his  country,  understood  Greek, 
Latin,  Hebrew,  Italian,  Spanish,  Portuguese,  etc.”  But 
far  more  precious  to  his  memory  and  important  for  our 
purpose,  is  the  fact  that,  according  to  the  Duke  de  St. 
Simon,  his  moral  character  was  a  happy  blending  into  one 
harmonious  whole  of  “  gravity,  justice,  piety,  and  purity 
of  manners.”  Would  you  hear  what  he  did  or  attempted 
to  do  in  the  cause  of  justice  and  good  government?  “He 
employed  his  authority  as  Procureur  General  in  most  cases 
wisely  and  honestly.  He  reformed  the  system  of  the  man¬ 
agement  of  public  hospitals ;  improved  the  discipline  of 
courts  of  justice  ;  and  instituted  a  quicker  mode  in  the  in¬ 
vestigation  of  criminal  cases  previous  to  their  being  brought 
to  judgment.  D’Aguesseau  aspired  through  life  to  the  high 


A  NOBLE  FAMILY  OF  LA  WYERS. 


389 


but  difficult  reputation  of  a  legal  reformer ; — and  it  is  in 
this  particular  that  his  reputation  has  the  greatest  claim 
upon  our  respect.  .  .  .  His  praiseworthy  attempts  icere 
resisted ,  no  doubt ,  by  all  those  whose  mistaken  interests  sug¬ 
gested  to  them  that  the  attainment  of  justice  ought  to  be  kept 
expensive  and  uncertain ,  instead  of  being  rendered  cheap 
and  secure.  He  is  said  to  have  confessed  that  he  did  not 
go  so  far  as  he  wished,  because  he  did  not  like  to  reduce  the 
profits  of  liis  professional  brethren.  This  was  a  mistake 
even  in  mere  worldly  policy  ;  for  when  law,  as  well  as  any 
other  article  of  exchange,  is  dear  and  worthless,  the  pur¬ 
chasers  will  be  few.” 

This  fault  he  nobly  redeemed  when  raised  to  the  office  of 
Chancellor  of  France,  in  1717.  He  opposed  with  inflexible 
firmness  the  schemes  introduced  by  the  political  economist 
Law  “for  substituting  fictitious  wealth  for  real  capital.” 
As  this  fatal  financial  policy  prevailed  at  court,  the  Chan¬ 
cellor  who  opposed  it  was  dismissed  and  exiled.  Two  years 
afterward,  when  the  bubble  had  burst,  the  Chancellor  was 
recalled.  “  His  high  sense  of  integrity  and  justice  would  not 
allow  him  to  hear  of  a  national  bankruptcy :  he  insisted  on 
making  good  the  government  obligations,  or  at  least  allow¬ 
ing  those  who  held  its  paper  to  lose  only  a  proportionate 
part ;  and,*  by  thus  preventing  a  bankruptcy,  he  contributed 
in  some  degree  toward  restoring  general  confidence.”  * 

Surely  here  is  a  noble  model  for  our  most  enlightened 
and  most  exalted  magistrates.  And  yet  France  can  boast 
of  still  loftier  instances  of  learning  and  virtue  in  her  chan¬ 
cellors.  The  family  of  Seguier  alone  from  1460  to  1789 
could  boast  of  sixty-eight  of  its  members  filling  the  highest 
dignities  in  the  magistracy, — a  glory  within  their  profession 
to  which  nothing  similar  is  found  in  history.  Ah,  would 
to  God  that  distinguished  lawyers  among  us  could  inspire 
their  sons  with  such  an  admiration  of  their  own  calling  and 
a  devotion  to  it,  that  every  succeeding  generation  of  their 
descendants  would  aim  solely  at  surpassing  their  parents 


*  See  biographical  article  in  “Penny  Cyclopaedia.” 


390 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


in  eminence  of  ability  and  integrity  of  life.  Pierre  Seguier, 
who  held  the  office  of  Chancellor  in  1635,  seemed  to  nnite 
in  his  person  every  merit.  He  braved  Richelieu  when  that 
minister  was  all-powerful,  and  resisted  alternately,  during 
the  long  minority  of  Louis  XIV.,  the  power  of  every  fac¬ 
tion  that  swayed  either  the  court,  the  nobles,  or  the  popular 
masses.  It  was  only  when  such  incorruptible  magistrates 
were  no  longer  found  to  oppose  the  progress  of  absolute 
power,  that  the  will  of  such  men  as  Louis  XIV.,  the  Regent 
H’ Orleans,  and  Louis  XV.,  became  the  supreme  law  in  the 
State.  Seguier,  however,  was  so  much  above  court  and 
nobility,  army  and  politicians,  that  he  was  sent  alone  and 
unarmed  to  quell  a  formidable  insurrection  in  Normandy, 
and  succeeded  in  bringing  back  the  rebels  to  obedience  by 
the  sheer  ascendency  of  his  “  sacerdotal  gravity  and  fer¬ 
vor.”  In  an  age  preeminent  for  its  intellectual  culture,  the 
Chancellor  was  so  distinguished  for  learning  and  devotion 
to  letters,  that  he  not  only  had  a  principal  part  in  organiz¬ 
ing  the  French  Academy,  but  he  was  chosen  to  be  its 
president,  and  declared  its  protector,  while  in  his  house, 
for  thirty  years,  were  held  the  sittings  of  that  celebrated 
body.  Need  we  remind  our  readers  that,  from  these  great 
and  proud  families  devoted  from  father  to  son  to  the  pro¬ 
fession  of  the  law,  have  sprung  most  of  the  men  who  have 
shed  on  French  letters  such  transcendent  glory  \ 

We  shall  hope  that  our  lawyers  and  magistrates,  by  cher¬ 
ishing  such  ideals  as  these,  and  by  loving  to  walk  in  these 
ancient  paths  of  learning,  honor,  and  integrity,  may  be  ever 
able  to  say  to  their  descendants : 

“  Tlie  good  and  mighty  of  departed  ages 
Are  in  their  graves  :  the  innocent  and  free. 

Heroes  and  poets,  and  prevailing  sages. 

Who  leave  the  virtue  of  their  majesty 
To  adorn  and  clothe  this  naked  world.  And  wo 
Are  like  to  them — such  perish,  but  they  leave 
All  hope,  or  love,  or  truth,  or  liberty, 

Whose  forms  their  mighty  spirits  could  conceive, 

To  be  a  rule  and  law  to  ages  that  survive/' 


ANCIENT  NOBILITY  OF  PHYSICIANS . 


391 


II.  The  Physician . 

It  was  Homer  wlio  sang  of  tlie  Physician  so  many  ages 
before  the  Christian  era, 

’lr/rpdS  y&p  avjjp  rtdWGJv  dvrd&oS  dWcov. 

“  A  wise  physician,  skilled  our  wounds  to  heal. 

Is  more  than  armies  to  the  public  weal.  ”  * 

Machaon,  of  whom  the  poet  here  speaks,  and  his  brother 
Podaleirios,  were  repnted  to  be  sons  of  Escnlapins, — and 
therefore  held  to  be  demi-gods, — on  account  of  their  ad¬ 
mirable  skill  in  the  healing  art,  much  more  than  by  their 
rank  among  the  Grecian  princes.  “  In  Herodotus  we  see 
how  the  physician  Democedes  was  honored  by  kings  and 
nations.  .  .  .  The  Thracian  physician  in  the  army,  who 
told  Socrates  what  he  had  learned  from  Zamolxis,  seems  to 
have  had  a  profound  sense  of  the  dignity  of  his  art  when  he 
said,  that  as  you  cannot  cure  the  eyes  without  curing  the 
head,  nor  the  head  without  healing  the  body ;  so  neither 
can  you  cure  the  body  without  curing  the  soul.  Another 
of  these  wise  physicians,  unlike  the  wretched  impostors 
from  the  Jewish  university  of  Salerno,  was  the  sage  who 
recalled  St.  Augustine  from  the  vain  study  of  astrology. 
Tertullian  called  medicine  “the  sister  of  philosophy.”  In 
the  eighth  century  a  school  of  philosophy  was  opened  in 
the  monastery  of  Monte  Cassino.  In  the  early  ages,  the 
monks  and  hermits  practiced  through  charity  the  cure  of 
diseases.  They  were  our  first  and  best  physicians  .  .  . 
well  skilled 

“  In  every  virtuous  plant  and  healing  herb 
That  spreads  her  verdant  leaf  to  the  morning  ray.” 

The  Benedictine  monks  had  always  schools  of  medicine. 
They  studied  Hippocrates,  Celsus,  and  Galen,  whose  sci¬ 
ence  is  the  astonishment  even  of  our  age.  Saints  Cosmas 
and  Damian,  who  are  daily  commemorated  by  the  Church,  f 


*  Iliad,  xi.  514  :  the  English  translation  is  Pope’s, 
f  In  the  Canon  of  the  Mass, — a  most  extraordinary  distinction. 


392 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


were  eminent  physicians,  who  suffered  martyrdom  about 
the  year  303.  Never  taking  any  fee,  they  were  styled  by 
the  Greeks  Anargyri  (from  the  Greek  avapyvpos ,  costing  no 
money).”  * 

The  Church'  s  Equal  Lore  for  both  Professions. 

It  were  hard  to  say  which  of  these  two  great  professions 
— Law  and  Medicine — was  held  in  greatest  estimation  by  the 
Church,  so  carefully  did  she  from  the  very  beginning  train 
both  lawyer  and  physician  to  the  highest  skill  in  their  call¬ 
ing  and  the  most  scrupulous  discharge  of  their  duties.  St. 
Luke  was  by  profession  a  physician,  the  favorite  companion 
of  the  great  St.  Paul  in  his  apostolic  labors,  one  of  the  four 
inspired  historians  of  our  Lord,  besides  being  the  author  of 
the  only  inspired  history  of  the  infant  Church  (the  “  Acts  of 
the  Apostles  ”).  The  traditions  of  these  first  ages  affirm  that 
he  was  also  a  painter  of  more  than  ordinary  skill,  and  hence 
he  has  been  chosen  by  Christian  artists  as  their  protector 
and  special  patron.  That  this  accomplished  man — a  con¬ 
verted  Gentile — should  have  been  chosen  by  St.  Paul  to  be 
his  associate  in  the  apostolic  ministry,  laboring  with  the 
great  founder  of  the  Grecian  and  Macedonian  churches  dur¬ 
ing  so  many  years,  would  prove  that  his  heart  was  as  pure 
and  beautiful  as  his  mind  was  cultivated. 

Ever  since  his  day  the  great  schools  of  medicine,  placed 
under  the  immediate  control  of  the  Church,  have  aimed  at 
fostering  in  the  souls  of  their  pupils  that  deep  spirit  of  faith 
and  piety,  that  innocence  of  soul  and  purity  of  life, — which 
can  alone  enable  the  physician  to  be  what  he  ought  ever  to 
be, — the  second  minister  of  God’s  mercy  and  healing  power 
at  the  sick-bed  and  in  the  bosom  of  Christian  families. 
Hence  the  Christian  religion  has  ever  labored  to  impress  on 
the  minds  both  of  physicians  and  surgeons  that  they  are  the 
custodians  of  the  bodily  health  and  temporal  honor  of  in¬ 
dividuals  and  families,  just  as  the  priest  is  the  guardian 
of  the  soul’s  welfare,  the  healer  of  its  wounds,  its  divinely 


*Digby,  “  Orlandus,”  ii.  259,  2G0. 


ADMIRABLE  MEDIAEVAL  SCHOOLS  OF  MEDICINE.  393 


appointed  guide  in  the  paths  of  spiritual  health  and  per¬ 
fection. 

The  physician,  in  all  Catholic  countries,  is  considered  to 
be  the  conscientious  assistant  of  the  priest  by  the  sick-bed 
and  in  the  hour  of  mortal  danger,  prompting  the  patient  to 
be  reconciled  with  God,  and — in  urgent  cases — refusing  the 
ministry  of  his  profession  to  the  sick  or  dying  person  till 
the  latter  had  complied  with  the  divine  commands  and 
placed  the  soul’s  interests  in  perfect  security.  In  thus  aid¬ 
ing  the  priest  in  his  most  sacred  functions,  and  helping  the 
operation  of  God’s  most  merciful  ordinances  for  the  soul’s 
salvation, — the  physician  also  finds,  by  experience,  that  he  is 
mightily  furthering  the  success  of  his  own  salutary  art,  and 
promoting  the  cure  of  the  body.  For  beside  the  natural 
connection  between  peace  of  conscience  and  the  subsidence 
of  physical  pain  and  irritation, — there  is  a  special  promise 
annexed  to  the  reception  of  the  last  sacraments  of  allevia¬ 
tion  from  suffering  and  restoration  to  health,  when  God’s 
fatherly  providence  deems  it  best  for  the  sufferer. 


The  Physician ’  s  Angelic  Model  and  Patron. 


Before  the  age  in  which  Christ  and  His  apostles  lived, 
there  had  been,  in  the  annals  of  God’ s  people,  a  most  mem¬ 
orable  example  of  the  union  of  this  twofold  healing  power, 
in  the  person  of  the  Archangel  Raphael  (“The  divine 
healer”).  One  of  the  most  beautiful,  touching,  and  in¬ 
structive  books  of  the  Old  Testament, — that  of  Tobias, — • 
relates  how  God  sent  from  on  high  His  messenger  to  bestow 
the  rarest  blessings  on  two  widely  separated  branches  of  a 
Hebrew  family  living  in  exile,  and  distinguished  for  exalted 
virtue.  To  the  head  of  one  household  eyesight  is  restored, 
and  to  the  other  the  grace  of  being  freed  from  the  obsession 
of  an  evil  spirit,  while  both  are  bound  more  firmly  together 
in  living  faith  and  fruitful  charity  by  the  nuptials  of  their 
children,  brought  about  by  their  angelic  benefactor. 

Thus  Raphael  became  to  the  early  Christians  what  he 
had  been  for  the  Jewish  people  in  exile  and  since  their  res¬ 
toration, — the  ideal  of  the  true  physician,  acting  under  the 


394 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TUElf. 


divine  guidance,  and  seeking  the  cure  of  the  sick  soul  while 
laboring  to  heal  the  body.  How  many  imitators  of  Raphael 
and  Luke,  and  Cosmas  and  Damian,  have  not  the  Christian 
ages  beheld  since  the  beginning !  The  history  of  every 
country  in  Christendom,  during  the  middle  ages,  is  filled 
with  the  most  instructive  and  edifying  anecdotes  concern¬ 
ing  the  devotion  of  physicians  to  their  twofold  task  of  pro¬ 
moting  every  good  work,  while  laboring  constantly  for  the 
advancement  of  the  sciences  pertaining  to  their  own  calling. 
The  Church  showed  her  care  for  this  professional  excellence 
by  founding  central  schools  of  medicine  and  raising  some  of 
them  to  the  rank  of  a  university,  as  well  as  by  her  liberality 
in  promoting  the  splendor  and  efficiency  of  the  medical 
schools  existing  in  such  great  centers  of  learning  as  Paris, 
Montpellier,  Bologna,  Pavia,  Padua,  Venice,  Florence,  and 
Rome. 

The  honor  too  in  which  she  held  physicians  soon  led  to 
their  rising  in  popular  estimation.  In  the  Italian  Republics 
they  formed  a  most  honorable  class,  whose  members  not 
only  attained  great  wealth,  but  very  often  wielded  the  high¬ 
est  offices  in  the  State.  Just  as,  a^l  through  these  ages  of 
faith,  the  lawyers  were  encouraged  to  form  separate  guilds 
and  confraternities  devoted  not  only  to  self-protection  and 
mutual  encouragement,  but  to  all  sorts  of  works  of  charity, 
even  so  and  much  more  so  did  the  members  of  the  medical 
profession  unite  for  the  like  purpose.  The  deep  and  sud¬ 
den  changes  effected  in  Catholic  countries  by  modern  revolu¬ 
tions  have  not  altogether  blotted  out  these  admirable  unions. 
Even  where  they  have  fallen  asunder,  the  best  elements  of 
them  have  gone  over  to  other  newer  and  more  active. bodies, 
— like  that  of  St.  Vincent  of  Paul  in  France. 

Apostolic  Spirit  of  Modern  Physicians. 

And  this  must  remind  our  readers  of  some  of  the  most 
glorious  and  touching  incidents  connected  with  the  revival 
of  faith  and  charity  in  the  France  of  our  day.  Foremost 
among  the  noble  men  whose  deeds  of  piety  and  beneficence 


APOSTOLIC  SPIRIT  OF  MODERN  PHYSICIANS.  395 

have  contributed  so  much  to  preserve  and  propagate  reli¬ 
gion  in  the  Kingdom  of  St.  Louis,  are  to  be  found  physi¬ 
cians.  The  long  stuggle  they  had  undergone  to  rise  to  dis¬ 
tinction  in  their  profession,  and  the  manifold  opportunities 
furnished  by  it  for  mixing  with  all  classes  of  men  and 
women  poisoned  with  the  Voltairian  unbelief, — they  only 
considered  to  be  the  providential  means  of  doing  their  duty 
by  the  sick  souls  brought  under  their  influence. 

During  the  months  of  March  and  April,  1862,  the  author 
had  been  sent  by  his  ecclesiastical  superiors  to  preach  the 
Lenten  Station  in  Coulommiers,  some  fifty  miles  to  the 
east  of  Paris,  in  the  diocese  of  Meaux.  This  portion  of  Bos- 
suet’s  ancient  diocese,  as  well  as  the  entire  territory  sur¬ 
rounding  the  capital  of  France,  is  a  moral  waste  over  which 
the  skepticism  of  the  eighteenth  century  had  first  swept 
like  a  terrible  frost  over  an  orchard  in  full  bloom,  killing  not 
only  the  fair  blossoms  but  the  trees  themselves  to  the  heart’s 
core  :  and  then  to  the  blight  had  succeeded  the  earthquake 
convulsing  the  entire  region  and  upsetting  all  the  mighty 
monuments  of  existing  civilization. 

The  city  itself  was  filled  with  a  hard-working  population, 
doubly  wretched  in  that  they  wrought  unceasingly  for  in¬ 
sufficient  wages,  and  had  lost  all  their  ancestral  faith,  hav¬ 
ing  ceased  to  look  forward  to  the  eternal  rest  and  bliss  as  a 
compensation  for  present  ills. 

Noble  Christian  men  resided  in  their  midst  who  made 
continual  efforts  to  relieve  both  their  moral  and  corporeal 
distress,  such  as  their  Mayor, — a  most  admirable  man, — and 
the  Chevalier  des  Mousseaux,  so  well  known  for  his  writ¬ 
ings  on  Spiritualism.  But  local  prejudices  and  bitter  politi¬ 
cal  antagonisms  marred  all  the  good  work  done  by  such  as 
they.  And  bad  as  was  the  city  folk,  the  surrounding  peas¬ 
antry  were  even  worse.  Their  religion  was  a  blind  hatred 
of  all  religion,  superadded  to  their  inveterate  envy  of  all 
wealth  and  superiority.  The  few  churches  which  the  Dev¬ 
olution  had  spared  were  left  free  to  the  women,  very  many, 
if  not  most,  of  whom  did  not  dare  to  go  to  confession  or 
communion  through  fear  of  their  husbands.  Indeed  the 


396 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


men,  as  a  general  rule,  only  appeared  in  church  twice  a 
year,  at  Christmas  and  on  Palm  Sunday, — impelled  thereto 
by  some  traditional  custom  or  some  strange  superstition. 

How  Magistrate  and  Physician  can  Work  Together. 

Every  Sunday,  however,  the  members  of  the  Society  of 
St.  Vincent  of  Paul  in  Paris,  sent  some  of  their  associates 
to  go  publicly  to  confession  and  communion  at  Coulom- 
miers,  in  order  to  encourage  the  lukewarm  and  vacillating 
Christians  among  the  bourgeoisie  and  the  laboring  classes 
to  imitate  their  example  and  practice  openly  the  religion  of 
their  fathers. 

Among  those  who  came  thus  weekly  to  fulfill  their  share 
of  this  apostolate  of  good  example,  we  remember  a  magis¬ 
trate,  still  young,  but  much  admired  for  his  learning  and 
eloquence.  He  was  wont  to  go  quietly  on  these  errands  of 
truest  charity,  at  great  inconvenience  to  himself,  and  at  the 
sacrifice  of  his  home-comforts  with  wife  and  children  on  his 
only  day  of  rest.  But  he  knew  for  whom  he  was  making 
the  sacrifice,  and  deemed  it  of  little  account  in  the  great 
crusade  which  he  and  his  associates  were  thus  silently 
carrying  on.  There  was  a  young  physician  also, — though 
it  may  be  that  some  of  our  readers  Avill  not  deem  a  man  of 
near  forty  young  ;  and  his  was  a  most  beautiful  and  most 
heroic  soul.  From  him  we  learned  many  most  interesting 
details  about  the  share  which  physicians  and  medical  stu-  * 
dents  had  in  bringing  home  to  the  needy  and  suffering  poor 
as  well  as  to  their  wealthy,  enlightened,  and  aristocratic 
neighbors, — the  sweet  light  of  faith  and  charity, — and, 
with  these,  the  long- vanished  hope  of  another  and  a  better 
life. 

Since  then,  as  the  whole  world  knows,  what  heroic  ex¬ 
amples  of  patriotic  devotion  and  Christian  charity  did  these 
same  men, — lawyers  and  physicians  and  students,  members 
of  the  Societies  of  St.  Vincent  of  Paul,  of  St.  Francis  Xavier, 
and  St.  Francis  Regis, — -display  on  the  field  of  battle,  in 
the  crowded  liosxfitals,  during  the  horrors  of  more  than  one 


HINTS  FOR  HS  IN  AMERICA. 


397 


siege,  and  while  their  country  was  at  the  darkest  hour  of 
its  destiny ! 

Of  the  like  services  rendered  to  Religion  by  English, 
Irish,  and  Scotch  medical  men,  we  can  make  but  brief  men¬ 
tion.  Everybody  knows  how  high  is  their  standard  of  pro¬ 
fessional  knowledge,  and  how  well  merited  the  elevated 
social  position  ever  held  by  physicians  in ,  all  the  three 
kingdoms.  Our  own  personal  memories  recall,  among  other 
pleasant  and  edifying  things,  the  modest  figure  of  more 
than  one  distinguished  London  physician  coming  daily  into 
the  Sacristy  of  Farm  Street  church  to  serve  Holy  Mass, 
and,  not  unfrequently,  serving  several  in  succession.  We 
know  them  to  be,  on  both  sides  of  the  Irish  Channel,  not 
only  foremost  in  the  ranks  of  modern  science  as  well  as 
in  all  that  pertains  to  their  own  calling,  but  foremost  also 
in  every  association  and  good  work  aiming  to  elevate  the 
laboring  man,  or  to  promote  education  and  charity.  In 
furthering  all  these  great  social  and  religious  objects  phy¬ 
sicians  and  lawyers  go  hand  in  hand  with  the  priest. 

Most  happy  should  we  be  to  cite  instances  of  professional 
excellence  and  devotion.  But  obedience  to  religious  au¬ 
thority  only  permitted  us  a  brief  glance  at  the  dear  old 
land  of  our  birth,  leaving  behind  a  craving  which  we  still 
hope  may  be  satisfied  ere  we  die.  And,  besides,  it  is  be¬ 
yond  our  purpose  and  scope  to  recite  the  many  glorious  ex¬ 
amples  of  indomitable  courage  and  professional  faithfulness 
to  duty  recorded  of  physicians  and  surgeons  in  the  dark, 
trying  days  of  famine  and  pestilence,  on  the  battle-fields  of 
Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  during  the  last  fifty  years.  Our 
own  Civil  War, — were  we  to  enter  into  such  details, — would 
furnish  us  materials  for  an  entire  volume,  if  we  would  re¬ 
count  the  merits  of  American  surgeons ;  while  the  terri¬ 
ble  scourge,  the  Yellow  Fever,  now  desolating  our  fairest 
Southern  cities,  places  once  more  in  conspicuous  light  the 
heroism  of  our  physicians,  our  priests,  and  our  Sisters  of 
Charity. 

It  is  heroism  displayed  in  the  performance  of  Duty  ;  and 
duty  is  to  God.  He  alone  can  praise  and  reward  it  fitly. 


398 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


We  can  only  show  how  glorious  and  praiseworthy  it  is  to 
live  and  die  faithful  to  it.  And  this  brings  us  to  our  con¬ 
cluding  observation. 


Why  the  Physician  should  be  thoroughly  Skilled  in  his 
Profession ,  and  thoroughly  Conscientious. 

—  *  v 

Men  of  the  highest  culture  and  widest  experience  will 
bear  us  out  in  the  assertion,  that  no  professional  man  should 
possess  in  a  superior  degree  to  the  physician  absolute  thor¬ 
oughness  in  theoretic  and  practical  knowledge,  a  deep  de¬ 
votion  to  his  calling,  a  living  faith,  and  unblemished  repu¬ 
tation. 

His  scientific  acquirements  are  needful  to  the  firm  confi¬ 
dence  which  he  must  have  in  himself  and  in  his  ability  to 
deal  with  the  most  serious  dangers  to  the  health  and  life  of 
his  patients  ;  his  reputation  for  solid  piety,  high  principle, 
and  conscientious  devotion  to  duty,  is  needful  to  the  abso¬ 
lute  confidence  which  his  patients  must  repose  in  him. 

Consequences  of  a  Surgeon ’  s  Intemperance. 

We  can  never  forget  one  tragic  occurrence  of  very  many 
years  ago,  that  may  serve  to  point  our  meaning  here.  A 
clergyman  had  been  summoned  in  haste  at  midnight  to  the 
bedside  of  a  young  lady  in  imminent  danger  of  death. 
During  nearly  forty-eight  hours,  previously,  the  utmost 
skill  of  two  good  physicians  had  been  unavailing  to  give 
her  relief,  and  a  third,— an  eminent  practitioner,  but  a  man, 
unhappily,  of  dissipated  habits, — had  been  sought  in  vain, 
and  came  in  while  the  priest  was  preparing  the  sufferer  for 
the  worst.  His  arrival  inspired  all  present  with  new  hope 
and  gave  courage  to  the  exhausted  young  mother.  The 
priest  withdrew  to  allow  the  three  physicians  to  hold  a  hur¬ 
ried  consultation.  Presently  the  young  lady’s  husband 
came  to  say  that  his  wife  was  dying.  She  was  in  a  death¬ 
like  swoon,  from  which  she  was  only  recalled  by  the  most 
powerful  restoratives.  When  the  soul  thus  fluttering  be- 


HAVE  THY  LAMP  ALWAYS  TRIMMED. 


399 


tween  life  and  death  was  able  to  address  both  her  tearful 
husband  and  the  physician  of  the  soul, — she  motioned  to 
all  but  them  to  leave  the  sick-room  ;  and  then  addressing 

the  priest,  “  Oh,  Father/’  said  she — “Doctor  -  is  not 

sober,  and  I  must  die.”  ...  It  was  even  so,  the  surgeon 
so  superior  in  skill  to  all  his  peers,  far  and  near,  had  been 
for  several  days  in  a  deep  debauch,  and  was  still  under  its . 
influence.  The  poor  sufferer,  who  had  looked  forward  to 
his  coming  as  to  her  only  chance  of  life,  had  no  sooner  per¬ 
ceived  from  his  appearance,  his  trembling  hands,  and  foul 
breath,  that  he  was  not  master  of  himself, — then  she  felt 
all  hope,  forsaking  her  and  swooned  away.  In  vain  did  the 
priest,  as  briefly  and  eloquently  as  the  urgency  of  the  case 
demanded,  endeavor  to  raise  her  courage  and  exhort  her  to 
put  her  trust  in  the  Great  Giver  of  life  and  strength, — she 
begged  to  be  allowed  to  retain  the  Crucifix  that  he  presented 
to  her  lips,  and  with  that  in  her  clasx>ed  hands,  she  expired, 
while  the  priest  and  the  household  were  praying  together 
in  an  adjoining  room.  The  shock  received  by  the  refined, 
gentle,  sensitive,  young  creature  after  all  her  terrible  suffer¬ 
ing,  prostrated  her  utterly  ;  and  with  her  perished  her  babe. 

It  was  hard  to  persuade  the  young  husband  whose  heart 
was  thus  crushed  and  whose  beautiful  home  was  left  deso¬ 
late  and  childless,  that  Doctor - had  not  killed  both  his 

wife  and  his  child,  by  presuming  to  show  himself  to  her  in 
a  state  bordering  on  delirium  tremens.  Nor  did  the  other 
physicians  attempt  to  palliate  what  was  utterly  inexcusable. 
How  far  this  sad  case  injured  the  reputation  and  practice 
of  the  offender  himself,  or  whether  the  indignation  of  the 
public  and  of  his  medical  brethren  induced  him  to  change 
his  ways,  we  cannot  say,  nor  would  it  further  our  purpose 
to  make  it  known  to  the  reader. 

The  case, — an  exceptional  one, — is  mentioned  to  show 
how  much  above  these  low  habits  and  degrading  excesses 
should  be  physicians,  clergymen,  and  lawyers, — all  men 
who  are  liable  to  be  called  at  any  hour  of  the  night  or  day 
to  the  sick-bed,  to  save  from  the  most  serious  peril  the  life 
of  the  body  or  the  life  of  the  soul,  or  to  settle, — in  presence 


400 


TR  UE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


of  a  near  Eternity  and  of  tlie  God  who  dispenses  its  re¬ 
wards  and  punishments, — the  most  momentous  questions  of 
worldly  interest,  involving  the  peace  and  welfare  of  families. 
We  who  are  expected  and  bound  to  be  the  light  and  guides 
of  others,  should  ever  be  ready  to  render  them  the  full  ben¬ 
efit  of  our  ministry, — and,  at  what  time  soever  we  are  sum¬ 
moned  to  the  bed  of  sickness,  it  should  truly  be  said  that, 
on  our  appearance, 

“  Abashed  tlie  devil  stood, 

And  felt  how  awful  goodness  is,  and  saw 
Virtue  in  her  shape,  how  lovely.” 

To  the  worth  of  medical  men  we  bear  a  willing  and  well- 
deserved  testimony  of  respect  and  affection,  founded  on  long 
acquaintance  and  the  experience  of  uniform  professional 
skill  and  personal  virtues.  In  how  many  of  them, — as  we 
now  look  back  and  recall  their  manifold  merits, — did  we  not 
find  verified  every  word  of  the  beautiful  eulogy  passed  on 
a  saint  by  a  mediaeval  writer  ? 

Fide,  vita,  verbo,  signis, 

Doctor  pius  et  insignis 
Cor  informat  populi. 

Mens  secura,  mens  virilis 
Cui  praesens  vita  vilis 
Viget  patientia. 

“  Pious  and  distinguished  doctor, 

Whom  faith,  word,  and  signs  instructor 
Fashioned  for  the  people’s  heart. 

Mind  secure,  of  manly  power, 

Through  the  present  fleeting  hour 
Patience,  virtue  doth  impart.”  * 

The  true  Christian  who  feels  himself  honored  in  filling  the 
office  of  God’s  instrument  for  the  preservation  of  life,  the 
increase  of  health,  the  happiness  of  families,  and  the  wel¬ 
fare  of  the  whole  community, — will  ever  bear  it  in  mind, 
especially  where  there  is  danger  of  death, — that  the  inter¬ 
ests  of  the  soul  are  dearer  to  God  than  bodily  life  or 
health. 


*  The  translation  is  from  Digby  as  well  as  the  Latin  quotation. 


CHAPTER  XX. 


THE  STATESMAN. 

Witli  grave 

Aspect  lie  rose,  and  in  liis  rising  seemed 
A  pillar  of  State  ;  deep  on  liis  front  engraven 
Deliberation  sat,  and  public  care  ; 

And  princely  counsel  in  liis  face  yet  shone. 

Majestic,  though  in  ruin  :  sage  he  stood 
With  Atlantean  shoulders  fit  to  bear 
The  weight  of  mightiest  monarchies  ;  his  look 
Drew  audience  and  attention  still  as  night 
Or  summer’s  noontide  air. 

Milton. 

Keep  ns  in  safety,  and  the  chairs  of  justice 
Supplied  with  worthy  men  !  Plant  love  among  us. 

Throng  our  large  temples  with  the  shows  of  peace  ; 

And  not  our  streets  with  war  1 

Of  politics,  in  the  odious  sense  given  to  the  word  by 
modern  morality,  we  wish  to  say  nothing  ;  of  politicians, — 
that  is,  men  who  trade  or  gamble  in  the  distribution  of 
public  office  and  patronage, — we  have  no  word  to  say.  Xor 
would  any  enlightened  reader  desire  that  the  priest  should 
soil  his  robe  or  busy  his  pen  with  concerns  which  to  men  of 
his  calling  must  ever  happily  remain  a  mystery, — a  land 
unknown  and  untrodden. 

With  men  who  are  intrusted  with  public  office  in  the 
State,  and  have  it  in  their  power  to  serve  the  best  interests 
of  their  fellow-citizens  and  thus  advance  on  earth  the  cause 
of  justice  and  right  order, — that  is,  the  cause  of  God, — we 
have  much  to  say  which  may  be  deemed  both  timely  and 
needful. 

We  understand  by  a  statesman,  one  thoroughly  trained 
26  401 


402 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


to  the  knowledge  and  administration  of  public  affairs,  and 
thoroughly  able  to  govern  the  State  wisely.  The  knowl¬ 
edge  and  management  of  public  business,  in  any  depart¬ 
ment,  requires  one  to  be  educated  thereto.  The  science  or 
art  of  governing  large  bodies  of  men, — of  governing  a  whole 
people,  especially, — is  of  all  arts  the  most  difficult,  of  all 
sciences  that  which  presupposes  the  most  consummate  wis¬ 
dom  and  prudence.  It  requires,  therefore,  a  most  careful 
education,  a  long  and  patient  training,  a  mind  well  stored 
with  the  clearest  and  most  varied  knowledge  of  men  and 
things,  a  judgment  well  balanced,  a  will  of  indomitable  firm¬ 
ness,  and  a  virtue  superior  to  all  self-seeking. 

How  a  Statesman  should  be  Trained. 

This  much  we  say  of  what  a  statesman  is  and  how  he 
should  be  formed  and  endowed, — because  of  the  belief  which 
is  daily  gaining  ground,  that  in  order  to  govern  wTell  one 
only  needs  good  sense,  intregrity,  and  the  choice  of  the 
people.  The  choice  of  an  entire  people  would  not  enable 
the  most  sensible  and  trustworthy  person  among  your  ac¬ 
quaintance  to  sail  a  ship  round  Cape  Horn,  with  a  crew 
of  honest  and  sensible  men  like  himself, — but  also,  like 
him,  utterly  ignorant  of  the  laws  of  navigation,  unac¬ 
quainted.  with  the  ocean,  its  currents  and  its  winds,  and 
unacquainted,  as  well,  with  the  simple  structure,  equip¬ 
ment,  and  management  of  any  vessel,  great  or  small. 

And  this  much  we  say,  even  at  the  risk  of  uttering  com¬ 
monplaces, — in  order  to  satisfy  the  plainest  understanding 
that  we  are  not  all  fit,  at  any  moment,  to  take  in  hand  the 
helm  of  the  ship  of  State. 

The  good  sense  of  the  most  illiterate, — which  is  nothing 
more  than  the  instinct  of  propriety,  — tells  them  that  as  no 
calling  requires  in  a  man  so  vast  an  amount  of  knowledge 
and  experience  as  that  of  the  statesman  and  ruler, — so 
none  should  have  a  more  careful  apprenticeship.  We  have 
seen,  in  the  preceding  chapters,  that  the  accomplished  law¬ 
yer,  the  accomplished  j)hysician,  the  accomplished  clergy- 


ERRONEOUS  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  STATE. 


403 


man,  the  accomplished  professor  of  any  science,  must  have, 
— just  like  the  accomplished  artisan  and  artist, — a  long,  long 
course  of  special  study  and  practice.  But  the  statesman  is 
bound  to  have, — if  he  would  not  continually  blunder  on  the 
gravest  practical  matters, — the  science  of  the  profoundest 
jurist,  with  a  thorough  knowledge  of  political  economy,  of 
all  past  history,  of  the  condition  and  resources  of  other 
States ;  and  to  this  must  be  added  no  slight  acquaintance 
with  theology  and  canon  law.  For  to  the  statesman  belongs 
not  only  to  regulate  the  enactment  of  wise  and  just  laws  on 
all  public  matters,  but  to  superintend  and  direct  their  ad¬ 
ministration. 

Hence  it  is  that  in  all  great  governments  young  men  des¬ 
tined  to  serve  the  State  as  ambassadors  or  administrators 
were  trained  in  a  special  school  at  the  end  of  their  ordinary 
college  or  university  course.  It  has  ever  been  the  case  in 
modern  Home, — and  it  is  so,  as  any  one  may  see,  in  the 
great  European  and  Asiatic  monarchies.  And,  be  it  said 
here  without  any  other  purpose  than  that  of  further  eluci¬ 
dating  our  meaning, — such  appears  to  have  been  the  object 
of  the  “ Civil  Service”  law  recently  passed  by  Congress, 
and  which  has  not  yet  had  any  general  or  serious  applica¬ 
tion.  J ust  as  our  Navy  and  Army  form  special  services  under 
Government,  requiring  a  long  and  careful  education, — even 
so  should  the  civil  service  of  the  Federal  Government  or  of 
the  several  State  Governments  only  admit  such  as  have  been 
most  carefully  prepared  and  trained  for  the  discharge  of 
their  weighty  duties.  This  alone  can  secure  us  a  succes¬ 
sion  of  enlightened  and  able  statesmen,  and  of  efficient  civil 
servants,  such  as  a  great  civilized  community  requires.  For, 
we  Americans  must  not  flatter  ourselves  that  we  are  as  natu¬ 
rally  born  with  ability  to  rule  the  State  and  direct  the 
mighty  and  complex  machinery  of  government,  as  the  duck 
is  to  swim  as  soon  as  it  has  broken  its  shell. 

What  is  the  State  f 

One  of  the  flrst  things  the  statesman  ought  to  know  be¬ 
fore  entering  into  the  public  service,  is  who  and  what  is  the 


404 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


master  lie  has  to  serve.  The  word  “  State  ”  is  made  use  of  at 
the  present  moment  to  offset  the  word  “Church.”  Indeed, 
it  is  the  avowed  purpose  of  modern  governments  to  invest 
the  abstraction  called  State  with  an  omnipotence  never  at 
any  period  of  her  history  claimed  by  the  Church  of  Christ 
as  one  of  her  attributes.  For,  whereas  the  Church  expressly 
disclaims  supremacy  or  even  direct  power  in  matters  per¬ 
taining  to  civil  government,  our  statesmen  of  the  Bismark 
and  the  Cavour  school,  will  have  the  laws  of  the  State  not 
only  supreme  but  practically  infallible,  to  be  set  above  the 
laws  of  the  Church,  the  laws  of  God,  and  the  dictates  of 
conscience. 

Even  in  other  countries,  where  the  constitution  and  the 
innate  sense  of  the  people,  guarantee  a  real  and  full  liberty 
of  conscience,  there  is  a  growing  tendency  to  invest  the 
State  with  this  same  odious  attribute  of  omnipotence  and 
infallibility.  Under  the  pretense  of  effecting  a  complete 
separation  between  the  religious  or  ecclesiastical  and  the 
civil  or  political  power,  they  have  gone  a  step  farther  and 
claimed  for  the  latter  4  4  absolute  independence  and  supre¬ 
macy  in  its  own  sphere.”  This  favorite  phrase,  however, 
is  made  to  cover  a  fallacy.  The  Christian  religion,  from 
the  beginning,  has  consistently  asserted  not  only  the  clear 
distinction  of  the  spiritual  and  the  temporal  authorities, 
but  the  independence  and  supremacy  of  the  civil  authority 
within  its  own  proper  domain.  It  was  the  will  of  the  divine 
Author  of  Christianity  that  men  should  render  unto  Cmsar 
the  things  that  are  Caesar’s  while  giving  to  God  what  ex¬ 
clusively  belongs  to  Him.  It  was  the  injunction  of  His 
Apostles  that  all  who  bore  the  name  of  Christian  should 
obey  the  civil  power  in  all  things  that  were  not  manifestly 
in  opposition  to  the  law  of  God  and  to  the  dictates  of  con¬ 
science  ;  and  this  full  and  conscientious  obedience  to  the 
constituted  authorities,  has  ever  been  understood  by  Chris¬ 
tians  as  a  real  though  indirect  compliance  with  the  Divine 
Will  itself.  For  God’s  majesty  is  seen  by  the  eye  of  faith 
behind  the  temporal  ruler  ;  and  in  fulfilling  the  lawful  ordi¬ 
nances  of  the  latter  we  only  submit  to  the  divine  ordinance 
itself. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  STATESMAN. 


405 


We  cannot  remind  the  men  of  our  day  either  too  seriously 
or  too  frequently  of  the  fact,  that  it  is  God  who  commands 
us  to  serve  our  country,  and  that  we  only  serve  it  more 
efficiently  and  gloriously  by  looking  up  to  Him,  as  to  the 
Almighty  Master  who  gives  to  such  service  its  dignity,  and 
promises  to  the  faithful  servant  the  only  true  and  abiding 
reward  that  devotion  and  self-sacritice  deserve. 

He  would  take  but  a  low  view  of  his  own  public  func¬ 
tions,  who  would  consider  the  choice  of  his  constituents  as 
the  only  source  of  the  high  obligations  he  assumes,  their 
will  as  the  rule  by  which  he  is  to  direct  his  aims  and  his 
policy,  and  their  approval  or  their  blame  as  the  end  toward 
which  he  must  direct  his  efforts. 

Public  men  who  set  their  hearts  on  mere  popularity, — 
though  the  greatest  possible  and  the  most  lasting, — as  their 
sweetest  recompense,  are  like  adventurers  in  a  balloon  seek-* 
ing  to  soar  high  and  go  far,  favored  by  the  calm  and  regu¬ 
lar  currents  of  the  atmosphere.  There  are  but  few  who 
ever  arrive  at  the  goal  they  promised  themselves,  or  who 
descend  to  their  original  level  with  sound  limbs  and  con¬ 
tented  minds. 

The  public  service, — that  of  the  statesman  particularly,— 
is  anything  but  plain  sailing.  It  is  troubled  by  treacherous 
shoals  and  storms  that  no  wisdom  can  forecast,  and  no  skill 
can  control.  Supposing  the  fairest  prospect  to  be  yours, 
and  that  success  beyond  your  expectations  has  crowned 
your  every  measure, — do  not  be  intoxicated  with  the  ap¬ 
plause  you  receive.  The  most  glorious  servants  of  Repub¬ 
lican  Rome  were  conducted  through  a  double  line  of  the 
most  splendid  edifices  ever  erected,  to  the  temple  of  Jove  on 
the  Capitoline  Hill,  while  all  Rome  strewed  their  path  with 
flowers,  while  young  men  and  maidens  sang  triumphal 
hymns  in  their  honor,  and  incense  fumed  all  along  the 
streets  to  intoxicate  the  sense  even  in  the  intervals  of  shout 
and  song.  But  within  a  few  feet  of  the  temple  of  Jove  in 
which  they  were  crowned  and  might  deem  themselves  demi¬ 
gods, — was  the  dreadful  Tarpeian  Rock  down  which  the 
hands  of  that  same  people  might  dash  them  on  the  morrow. 


406 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


We  have  seen  in  onr  day  these  terrible  alternations  of 
popular  enthusiasm  and  frenzied  ingratitude.  We  have 
seen  mighty  monarchs  crowned  amid  the  peans  of  the  popu¬ 
lar  millions,  and  driven  from  their  capitals  like  malefactors 
in  disguise  fleeing  before  the  hounds  of  justice  ;  we  have 
witnessed  in  the  midst  of  modern  Rome,  the  delirious  de¬ 
monstrations  of  a  people’ s  gratitude  and  veneration  toward 
the  most  fatherly  of  sovereigns,  the  most  single-hearted 
and  generous  of  benefactors  ;  and,  a  few  months  later,  that 
whole  people,  headed  by  its  own  army,  besieged  that  noble 
Parent  and  Prince  in  his  own  palace,  after  murdering  his 
servants.  Have  we  not  also  seen  our  own  statesmen  and 
chief  magistrates  entering  upon  their  high  office  amid  the 
loud  acclaim  of  a  whole  people,  and  descend  from  their 
station  unblessed,  unloved,  uncared  for?  Are  there  not, 
among  kindred  peoples,  contemporary  instances  of  prime 
ministers  who  were  but  yesterday  the  idols  of  the  worship¬ 
ing  multitude,  and  whose  very  residence  may  be  to-night 
sacked  by  these  same  worshipers?  “  Honors  and  digni¬ 
ties  are  benefices  which  fortune  and  the  world  have  charged 
with  such  great  pensions,  and  the  reserve  of  so  many  trou¬ 
bles,  that  in  the  end  men  are  glad  to  escape  from  them.” 

Serve  God  in  serving  the  State. 

Why  do  we  insist  on  this  ?  Solely  for  the  purpose  of  in¬ 
ducing  our  statesmen  and  public  servants  to  be  high-souled, 
to  have  from  the  beginning  of  their  career  these  lofty  views 
of  duty  which  shall  preserve  them,  in  the  inevitable  day  of 
disfavor  and  disappointment,  from  feeling  that  their  life  has 
been  wrecked  and  wasted,  and  that  they  have  served  only 
an  impotent  or  an  ungrateful  master.  To  Catholics,  who 
understand  what  “ purity  of  intention,”  working  for  God 
solely  or  principally  in  all  that  one  undertakes  and  accom¬ 
plishes, — there  will  be  but  little  difficulty  in  understanding 
how  soul-stirring  is  the  Sursum  Cor  da  !  not  only  in  setting 
one’s  foot  on  the  steep  and  icy  path  of  public  duty,  but  in 
the  middle  way  when  difficulties  crowd  upon  one,  and  there 


UNCHRISTIAN  AMBITION 


407 


is  none  to  cheer  by  kind  word  or  deed,  and  above  all  in  the 
disastrous  ending,  when  cast  down  by  utter  defeat  and  dis¬ 
appointment.  Where  you  labor  for  His  service,  and  seek 
His  honor  and  glory,  who  cherishes  only  the  pure  and  ar¬ 
dent  desire  of  your  sonly  heart,  and  esteems  the  generosity 
that  no  difficulty  dispirits  and  no  defeat  discourages,  as  far 
more  praiseworthy  than  the  most  glorious  success, — you 
shall  never  be  cast  down  by  adversity  nor  lifted  up  into 
pride  or  self -laudation  by  prosperity.  So,  to  the  statesman, 
much  more  than  to  the  citizen  in  any  walk  of  private  life, — 
we  must  say  :  O  brave  heart,  you  have  a  dangerous  road  to 
travel ;  see  to  it,  then,  that  God  the  all-powerful,  and  the 
ever-helpful,  be  first,  and  middlemost,  and  last  in  your  aims, 
in  your  hopes,  in  all  your  labors  ! 

This  consideration  will  enable  you  to  appreciate  the  wise 
counsels  delivered  in  the  following  passage  by  one  who  had 
forgotten  conscience  for  ambition  and  the  fear  of  God  for 
his  sovereign’ s  favor,  at  the  very  crisis  of  his  country’ s  fate, 
and  winked  at  a  despotic  king’ s  unholy  passions,  when  the 
latter,  to  gratify  them,  was  ready  to  create  a  schism,  and, 
like  Lucifer  in  Heaven,  to  break  up  by  rebellion  the  divine 
unity  established  by  Christ. 

“Mark  but  my  fall,  and  that  that  ruined  me. 

...  I  charge  thee,  fling  away  ambition  ; 

By  that  sin  fell  the  angels  ;  how  can  man  then. 

The  image  of  his  Maker,  hope  to  win  by  it  ? 

Love  thyself  last  :  cherish  those  hearts  that  hate  thee  ; 

Corruption  wins  not  more  than  honesty. 

Still  in  thy  right  hand  carry  gentle  peace. 

To  silence  envious  tongues.  Be  just,  and  fear  not : 

Let  all  the  ends  thou  aim’st  at,  be  thy  country’s. 

Thy  God’s,  and  Truth’s  ;  then,  if  thou  fall’st,  .  .  . 

Thou  fall’st  a  blessed  martyr.  .  .  . 

Had  I  but  served  my  God  with  half  the  zeal 
I  served  my  king,  He  would  not  in  mine  age 
Have  left  me  naked  to  mine  enemies.”  * 

Governments  for  the  People ,  not  for  the  Governing  Class. 

The  great  mistake  of  statesmen  is  either  to  fancy  that  the 


*  Shakspeare,  “  King  Henry  VIII.,”  act  iii.,  scene  ii. 


408 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


service  of  their  country  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  service 
of  their  God,  or  to  make  of  the  acquisition  of  place  and 
power  the  sole  end  of  their  efforts,  or  to  sacrifice  conscience, 
justice,  truth,  and  religion  to  policy  and  party.  The  theo¬ 
ries  of  government  that  would  tend  to  make  of  the  people  a 
flock  of  sheep  to  be  shorn  for  the  sole  benefit  of  their  rulers 
has  found  no  countenance  from  the  pontiffs  and  doctors 
of  Holy  Church.  Again  and  again  have  her  most  eloquent 
and  most  authorized  writers  proclaimed  that  God  deposited 
with  the  body  of  the  people  the  authority  necessary  for  all 
the  ends  of  social  life,  and  that  it  is  from  the  people  that 
magistrates  and  rulers  derive  their  legitimate  powers.  But 
the  exercise  of  that  authority,  in  God’s  design  and  in  ac¬ 
cordance  with  the  nature  of  things,  should  ever  be  for  the 
benefit  of  the  people,  and  regulated  according  to  the  ex¬ 
press  will  of  the  divine  Creator  and  Governor  of  the  moral 
world,  so  as  to  secure  to  the  members  of  the  community 
peace,  plenty,  and  prosperity, — all  the  ends  of  order  and 
justice. 

Moreover, — as  revealed  religion  is  a  fact  admitted  by 
peoples  and  governments  still  calling  themselves  Christian, 
they  are  bound,  if  they  would  be  consistent  in  their  belief 
and  profession,  to  square  their  own  lives  as  well  as  the 
principles  of  their  polity, — their  laws,  their  administration, 
and  intercourses  with  other  peoples, — in  conformity  with  the 
Divine  Will  as  revealed  by  Christ.  Hence,  there  should  be 
nothing  in  their  legislation  or  their  policy  to  contradict  the 
sublime  doctrine  of  the  unity  and  brotherhood  of  the  race, 
of  their  common  reciprocal  duties  here  and  their  common 
destiny  hereafter.  The  charity  that  binds  brother  to 
brother,  under  the  law  of  love  of  the  One  Almighty  Father, 
should  be  at  the  bottom  of  all  public  duties  and  obligations, 
as  at  the  bottom  of  all  private  virtues  and  neighborly 
offices. 

Every  form  of  selfishness  both  in  the  public  magistrate 
and  in  the  private  citizen  conflicts  with  that  divine  charity 
which  is  the  very  life-breath  of  Christian  society,  and  which 
ought  to  be  the  animating  spirit  of  all  nations  who  claim  to 


TRUE  STATESMANSHIP  IS  SELF-SACRIFICE . 


409 


be  the  offspring  of  Christian  civilization.  Indeed,  the  true 
Christian  statesman,  acting  up  to  the  principles  of  his  faith, 
must  look  upon  himself  as  a  public  servant, — doing  service 
to  God  while  serving  the  interests  of  the  commonwealth. 


The  Christian  Statesman  is  Gloriously  Singular. 

These  principles  and  practical  rules  of  conduct  may  not 
be,  indeed  we  know  are  not, — those  which'  guide  the  gene¬ 
rality  of  public  men.  Perhaps  it  might  be  said,  that  to  be 
guided  by  such  supernatural  truths  would  only  render  one 
singular,  or  expose  one  to  be  excluded  altogether  from 
public  life.  We  do  not  think  that  the  Christian  spirit  of 
Alfred  the  Great  hindered  him  in  overcoming  his  enemies, 
or  in  pacifying  his  kingdom  and  giving  to  it  these  very  laws 
which  are  to-day  the  vital  principles  of  the  American  Con¬ 
stitution.  We  do  not  think  that  the  child-like  innocence, 
the  constant  desire  of  seeking  the  divine  pleasure  and  glory 
in  every  measure  of  his  government,  in  every  law  that  he 
passed,  in  the  wise  and  impartial  judgments  he  rendered, 
and  in  his  successful  efforts  to  reconcile  the  rights  of  his 
civil  government  with  those  of  the  Church  within  his  king¬ 
dom, — rendered  St.  Louis  pusillanimous,  or  lowered  him  in 
the  esteem  of  his  contemporaries  or  the  admiration  of  pos¬ 
terity.  And  so  with  his  great  kinsman  St.  Ferdinand  III., 
King  of  Castile,  the  wise  legislator,  the  brave  and  heroic 
soldier,  the  model  man  and  Christian  in  every  relation  of 
life. 

These  true  statesmen  were,  to  be  sure,  singular  ;  that  is, 
they  stand  out  alone  before  the  mind’s  eye,  amid  the  mul¬ 
titude  of  really  good  and  great  man  who  lived  in  the  same 
age,  like  those  Pound  Towers  of  Ireland  rising  above  the 
ruins  of  the  past  and  the  desolation  of  the  present,  a  won¬ 
der  and  a  mystery  to  the  artist  as  well  as  to  the  historian. 
St.  Bernard  says  somewhere  nihil  sanctum  nisi  singular e, 
— “  every  true  saint  is  a  something  singular,” — in  the  per¬ 
fection  which  raises  him  above  the  multitude.  Be  not 
afraid  to  be  singular  and  surpassing  in  your  uprightness. 


410 


TRUE  MEN  A8  WE  NEED  THEM. 


your  integrity,  your  firmness  in  resisting  the  torrent  of  cus¬ 
tom  and  the  degrading  influences  of  the  surrounding  atmo¬ 
sphere. 

And  this  brings  us  back  to  the  extract  which  heads  this 
chapter.  He  surely  was  singular,  that  Seraph  Abdiel,  who, 
amid  the  countless  host  of  angels  who  followed  Lucifer  in 
his  revolt,  was 

“Faithful  found 

Among  the  faithless,  faithful  only  he  ; 

Among  innumerable  false,  unmoved. 

Unshaken,  unseduced,  unterrified, 

His  loyalty  he  kept,  his  love,  his  zeal  ; 

Nor  number,  nor  example,  with  him  wrought 
To  swerve  from  truth,  or  change  his  constant  mind, 

Though  single.”  * 

This  glorious  singularity  was  never  more  needed  than 
amid  the  universal  disposition  toward  social  change,  and 
the  consequent  general  confusion  of  ideas,  which  mark  our 
times. 

Even  the  best  statesmen  of  the  epoch,  iu  the  wish  to  con¬ 
ciliate  the  anticliristian  principles  which  tend  more  and 
more  to  prevail  in  the  policy  of  modern  governments,  with 
the  august  and  venerable  notions  and  maxims  that  were 
once  accepted  by  all  Christendom, — resemble  not  a  little  the 
astute  leader  described  by  the  poet  in  the  heading  of  this 
chapter. 

The  masterpieces  of  the  Creator,  even  when  fallen  and 
degraded  by  rebellion  against  Him,  preserve  the  outlines  of 
their  primitive  grandeur.  God  does  not  take  away  from 
His  worst  enemies  either  native  wisdom,  or  superior  knowl¬ 
edge,  either  the  genius  to  plan  great  things  or  the  fortitude 
necessary  to  their  execution.  The  minister  of  state  who 
enlists  whole  senates  in  the  unholy  crusade  which  he  un¬ 
dertakes  against  liberty  and  religion,  will  not  be  deprived 
either  of  his  gift  of  “ princely  counsel,”  or  of  the  ruined 
majesty  of  presence  which  still  awes  the  vulgar,  or  of  the 


*  “  Paradise  Lost,”  book  v.,  near  tbe  end. 


THE  TRUE  IMMORTALITY  OF  FAME. 


411 


golden  flow  of  eloquence  and  the  facinating  look,  which 
can  hold  an  audience  spell-bound,  and  command 

“  attention  still  as  niglit 
Or  summer’s  noontide  air.” 

We  are  contemplating  here  the  statesman,  minister,  ruler, 
who  is  a  man  “according  to  God’s  own  heart,”  like  the 
great  poet  and  warrior-king  of  Israel ;  a  man  who  seeks  to 
make  the  interests  of  the  Eternal  Majesty  first,  middlemost, 
and  last  in  all  his  policy.  Such  a  man,  though  he  may  not 
perhaps  ever  be  the  popular  idol  of  the  hour,  will  be  sure 
to  draw  the  attention  and  to  deserve  the  respect  of  the  solid 
men  of  principle  and  conscience,  of  the  enlightened  and 
far-seeing  who  are  not  dazzled  by  newborn  and  brilliant 
theories,  but  who  are  ever  anxious  that  the  present  of 
nations  should  be  made  up  of  all  the  elements  of  greatness 
of  the  past,  so  that  the  growth  of  national  prosperity  shall 
be  like  that  of  the  giant  trees  of  California, — increase  of 
strength,  vitality,  and  beauty  in  every  portion  of  the  mighty 
frame,  from  the  earth-roots  that  buttress  up  the  towering 
trunk  to  the  extremity  of  the  wide-spread  arms,  and  the 
topmost  bud  of  this  year, — the  latest  addition  to  the  height 
of  the  lordly  tree.  Not  so,  with  most  of  the  statesmen 
whom  erratic  public  opinion  so  loudly  bepraises.  The  to¬ 
day  of  the  constitutions  they  create  or  patch  up  hastily  is 
not  the  legitimate  growth  of  the  national  life  of  yesterday. 
It  is  fictitious,  not  natural ;  it  is  not  the  production  of 
nature,  and  is  therefore  doomed  to  have  neither  duration, 
nor  salutary  influence. 

The  work  and  the  fame  of  the  workman  are  also  doomed 
to  be  short-lived.  ‘  ‘  For  behold  they  that  go  far  from  Thee 
shall  perish  :  Thou  hast  destroyed  all  them  that  are  disloyal 
to  Thee.”  * 

Not  so  the  good  and  great  name  of  the  statesman,  who, 
convinced  that  the  constitution  of  a  nation,  with  its  laws, 
its  time-honored  customs,  and  its  institutions,  are  its  natu¬ 
ral,  God-given,  and  God-directed  social  growth, — only  aims 


*  Psalm  lxxii.  27. 


412 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


at  helping  and  perfecting  the  work  of  the  all -wise  and  all- 
mighty  hand.  His  glory  shall  be  like  these  stupendous 
monuments  of  Egypt,  which  survive  the  peoples  who  wit¬ 
nessed  their  erection.  From  amid  the  undistinguished 
graves  of  millions  buried  beneath  the  invading  desert 
around,  the  pyramid  stands  sublime,  as  immovable  and 
as  durable  as  the  solid  earth.  The  traveler  from  afar  sees 
it  in  the  morning  air  like  a  point  scarcely  visible  on  the 
level  rim  of  the  eastern  horizon.  But  as  he  journeys  across 
the  sandy  waste,  what  was  only  a  speck  increases  in  magni¬ 
tude,  growing,  growing  upon  the  sense,  till  a  nearer  ap¬ 
proach  lifts  up  the  stupendous  mass  into  the  sky,  dwarfing 
into  insignificance  the  other  mighty  monuments  of  departed 
ambition  or  genius. 

The  Fruits  of  True  Statesmanship. 

From  a  statesman  entertaining  these  sound  principles  and 
supernatural  views,  what  should  the  community  expect? 

To  answer  this  question  we  have  only  to  ask  ourselves 
what  are  the  most  urgent  needs  so  often  set  forth  in  the 
public  press, — not  under  the  influence  of  political  passion, 
or  when  pleading  for  some  partisan  purpose ;  but  when 
agreed  upon  a  generally  felt  want. 

We  need  reforms  in  legislation,  and  in  the  halls  of  legis¬ 
lation.  We  need  to  reconstruct  (if  that  indeed  be  possible), 
in  this  country  at  least,  the  very  machinery  of  the  ballot- 
box,  and  the  mode  of  nomination  and  election  for  every 
public  office.  We  put  it  to  the  enlightened  men  of  every 
political  party,  who  are  not  office-holders,  or  candidates  for 
office,  whether  the  constitutional  liberty  of  the  American 
citizen,  in  its  most  sacred  and  important  exercise, — that  of 
the  suffrage, — is  not  so  shackled  by  traditional  custom,  by 
the  tyranny  of  party,  that  its  exercise  is  only  a  mockery  of 
freedom.  Neither  in  the  choice  of  Federal,  State,  or  muni¬ 
cipal  officers, — are  the  mass  of  the  citizens  consulted  about 
the  selection  of  candidates  ;  nor  in  the  form  of  voting  for 
them  are  the  electors  allowed  much  more  freedom  than  a 


RADICAL  REFORMS  IMPERATIVELY  NEEDED.  413 


regiment  in  the  front  rank  of  battle  is  given  to  advance  or 
to  retreat.  They  have  to  choose  from  lists  made  up  by  two 
or  three  men  without  any  regard  to  their  wishes  ;  and  they 
have  to  choose  between  candidates  imposed  upon  them,— 
or  to  throw  their  vote  away. 

Thus  are  the  people  not  left  free  to  place  in  the  highest 
and  most  important  offices  in  the  State  the  men  whom  they 
know  to  be  most  worthy.  The  exercise  of  their  sovereignty 
in  its  most  august  function  is  thus  defeated  of  its  purpose, 
and  made  a  delusion  and  a  mockery. 

We  pause,  and  hasten  to  pass  on.  For  the  ground  be¬ 
neath  us  is  like  the  scarcely  cooled  lava  within  the  crater 
of  Vesuvius ;  it  is  scorching  hot,  and  the  hidden  fires  are 
heard  to  mutter  and  felt  to  rise  and  fall  threateningly  be¬ 
neath  the  feet  of  the  venturesome  intruder. 

We  need  radical  reform  in  the  exercise  of  our  most  sa¬ 
cred  liberties.  We  need  a  remedy  against  corruption  in  the 
very  sanctuary  where  our  law-makers  meet.  We  need  an 
immediate  preventive  against  privileged  and  partisan  legis¬ 
lation.  For  Venality  has  long  been  the  bane  and  the  shame 
of  more  than  one  legislative  assembly  ;  and  the  question  is, 
“  Who  will  dare  to  exorcise  the  Evil  Spirit  from  its  usurped 
and  accustomed  place  of  power?” 

We  need  laws  to  repress  rampant  crime.  Who  is  safe  in 
his  own  house,  either  in  the  most  peaceful  country  place,  or 
in  the  most  public  street  of  the  crowded  city  \  There  was  a 
time  when  the  midnight  robber  fled  in  haste  when  discov¬ 
ered  in  his  unholy  work  ;  but  now  every  burglar  is  a  mur¬ 
derer,  and  every  murderer  can  promise  himself  almost  cer¬ 
tain  or  comparative  impunity !  Why,  robberies  are  com¬ 
mitted  in  outmost  frequented  thoroughfares,  in  our  crowded 
street-cars,  and  not  a  soul  will  care  or  dare  to  interfere ! 
And  robbers  daily  conspire  to  assail  citizens  on  the  open 
street,  and  in  the  full  blaze  of  noonday,  plunder  them  and 
almost  murder  them  in  sight  of  hundreds,  and  escape  all 
detection  !  Ladies,  refined,  well-born,  highly  connected,  can¬ 
not  venture  to  travel  in  one  of  our  “palace  cars,”  without 
being  spirited  away  by  villians,  while  vainiy  appealing  for 


414 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


protection  to  the  descendants  of  the  men  who  colonized 
New  York  and  New  England,  and  founded  the  glorious  edi¬ 
fice  of  American  freedom  !  And  with  all  this, — in  a  country 
blessed  with  such  varied  wealth  and  magnificent  agricul¬ 
tural  and  commercial  resources,  as  country  never  enjoyed 
since  the  world  was  a  world,  we  here  in  New  York  are  so 
loaded  and  borne  down  by  taxation,  that  property  is  not 
worth  the  holding,  and  that  universal  bankruptcy  is  staring 
us  in  the  face  ! 

* 

Surely  we  need  reforms, — and  need  statesmen  who  will 
save  the  State  from  ruin  in  the  midst  of  overflowing  plenty, 
save  the  sacred  name  of  law  and  justice  from  the  sacrilegious 
hands  of  their  makers  and  guardians,  save  the  divine  char¬ 
acter  of  authority  from  the  contempt  and  hatred  of  the 
people,  and  save  society,  —  become  like  a  ship  with  a 
drunken,  quarreling  crew,  driven  headlong  before  the  storm, 
— from  going  to  pieces. 

Yes,  the  words  of  the  poet  sound  like  the  command  of  an 
insjoired  prophet : 

“  Keep  us  in  safety,  and  the  chairs  of  justice 
Supplied  with  worthy  men  !  Plant  love  among  us. 

Throng  our  large  temples  with  the  shows  of  peace. 

And  not  our  streets  with  war  !  ” 


CHAPTER  XXL 


THE  TOILERS  OF  THE  PEH. 

f  -  I  *  «■»  ‘  ; 

* 

No  :  Captain  Sword  a  sword  was  still, 

He  could  not  unteacli  his  lordly  will  ; 

He  could  not  attemper  his  single  thought  ; 

It  might  not  be  bent,  nor  newly  wrought : 

And  so,  like  the  tool  of  a  disused  art, 

He  stood  at  his  wall,  and  rusted  apart. 

’Twas  only  for  many-souled  Captain  Pen 
To  make  a  world  of  swordless  men. 

Leigh  Hunt. 

The  most  obstinate  beliefs  that  men  entertain  about  themselves  are  such  as 
they  have  no  evidence  for  beyond  a  constant  spontaneous  pulsing  of  their  self- 
satisfaction — as  it  were,  a  hidden  seed  of  madness,  a  confidence  that  they  can 
move  the  world  without  precise  notion  of  standing-place  or  lever. 

Two  armies  of  toilers  stand  before  ns, — mighty  armies 
both  of  them, — the  army  of  Men  of  Letters,  and  the  vast 
hosts  of  Industry  ;  the  former  aiming  at  exploring  all  the 
mysteries  of  knowledge,  at  enlightening  the  intelligence  of 
men  and  swaying  their  souls  ;  the  latter,  in  manifold  de¬ 
pendence  of  them,  conquering  the  material  world,  forcing 
the  earth  and  all  its  elements  to  yield  up  their  treasures 
to  industry,  and  thereby  to  minister  to  all  the  wants  and 
pleasures  of  mankind. 

We  purpose  to  speak  lovingly  of  these  two  hosts  of  toil¬ 
ers, — of  men  of  letters  in  this  chapter ;  of  industry  and 
labor  in  the  next. 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say,  that,  under  God,  and  directed 
aright  by  reason  and  conscience,  Literature  is  the  greatest 
force  of  the  moral  world, — it  is  not  only  the  force  which 
represents  Mind  in  its  conflict  with  rebellious  Matter, — but 

415 


416 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


that  which  enables  knowledge  to  mold  and  control  immor¬ 
tal  mind  itself. 

Knowledge  has  been  the  mistress  of  the  world  from  the 
beginning.  Let  us  not  be  too  proud  of  the  superior  en¬ 
lightenment  of  our  age.  Were  it  ever  to  come  into  the 
mind  of  influential  persons  to  create  a  Universal  Exposition 
of  the  Ancient  and  Modern  Literatures,  together  with  the 
productions  of  high  art  collected  from  all  ages  and  coun¬ 
tries, — we  should  not  be  tempted  to  be  so  over-boastful  as 
some  of  our  writers  would  make  us. 

Are  we,  then,  disposed  to  glorify  the  past  at  the  expense 
of  the  present  ?  No,  assuredly.  We  only  wish  to  profit 
by  all  the  glories  of  the  mighty  past  so  as  to  make  the 
present  greater,  more  glorious  still,  more  enlightened,  more 
prosperous,  peaceful,  and  lieaven-i  ike.  The  past,  for  the 
man  who  reflects,  grasps  the  full  reality  of  things,  and  ex¬ 
presses  it  to  himself  or  others, — is  the  entire  human  family 
toiling  through  the  uncounted  ages  to  make  this  fair  world 
of  God’ s  more  beautiful  and  blissful  for  us,  their  posterity. 

A  sweet  modern  singer  *  has  painted  this  past  as  a  dead 
king,  who  lies  crowned,  but  cold,  in  his  sepulcher,  while  the 
present,  his  daughter,  reigns  over  us  and  claims  our  hom¬ 
age. 

“  She  inherits  all  his  treasures, 

She  is  heir  to  all  his  fame, 

And  the  light  that  lightens  round  her 
Is  the  luster  of  his  name  : 

She  is  wise  with  all  his  wisdom, 

Living  on  his  grave  she  stands, 

On  her  brow  she  bears  his  laurels. 

And  his  harvests  in  her  hands. 

“  Noble  things  the  great  Past  promised. 

Holy  dreams,  both  strange  and  new  : 

But  the  Present  shall  fulfill  them. 

What  he  promised,  she  shall  do.” 

High  Mission  of  Men  of  Letters. 

There,  precisely,  lies  the  difficulty,  to  make  the  present 


*  Adelaide  Anne  Procter. 


VOICES  FROM  THE  PAST,  LIVING  VOICES. 


417 


realize  wliat  the  past  had  conceived  of,  and  to  leave  no  one 
of  its  glorious  promises  unfulfilled.  The  man  who  would 
do  his  whole  duty  to  God  and  his  own  kind,  by  making  the 
very  best  use  he  can  of  his  gifts  and  his  opportunities,  does 
not  stop  to  compare  the  merits  of  his  own  generation  with 
those  of  the  men  who  have  gone  before  him.  He  looks  up 
to  the  God  who  has  placed  him  on  the  present  point  of 
space  and  time,  and  labors  here  and  now  with  his  whole 
heart  to  do  all  the  good  he  can,  and  in  the  best  way  he  can. 
This  is  what  every  conscientious  man  of  letters  will  do. 

For,  writers  who  are  worthy  of  their  high  calling  know 
that  they  have  a  mission  to  fill  ;  they  feel  the  dignity  of  it. 
They  honor  the  great  minds  iu  the  past  who  have  toiled  to 
fulfill  a  similar  duty  in  their  own  day.  It  is  even  remarka¬ 
ble  that  the  writers  who  declaim  continually  against  what 
they  call  “  the  worship  of  the  dead  past,”  are,  everyone  of 
them,  mediocrities,  whose  works  are  foredoomed  not  to  sur¬ 
vive  their  authors.  W e  doubt  if  there  ever  lived  a  man  of 
genius  who  was  not  a  most  reverent  worshiper  of  departed 
excellence,  an  ardent  imitator  of  the  deathless  masterpieces 
bequeathed  to  us  by  the  mighty  dead. 

Nay,  they  are  not  dead  voices  which  speak  to  us  in 
these  same  masterpieces  of  wisdom,  eloquence,  and  poetry. 
They  thrill  every  pulse  of  our  living  hearts,  as  they  have 
thrilled  those  of  a  hundred  generations  before  us.  We  be¬ 
lieve  in  the  divinity  of  genius.  God  endows  a  human  spirit 
with  a  share  of  His  own  creative  might ;  gives  to  the  pen 
of  the  writer  or  the  voice  of  the  speaker  somewhat  of  the 
power  of  the  Almighty  Word  when  it  said,  “Be  light  made  ! 
And  light  was  made;”  and  “Let  the  earth  bring  forth! 

.  .  .  And  the  earth  brought  forth.” 

If  the  mighty  host  of  the  glorious  toilers  of  the  pen  could 
only  understand  Who  it  is  that  sends  them  to  cast  over 
every  region  of  earth  the  seeds  of  that  Tree  of  Knowledge 
and  Life, — truth  !  If,  going  forth  early  to  the  divine  work 
of  this  husbandry  of  souls,  writers  would  lift  their  hearts 
to  Him  from  whom  alone  all  true  inspiration  descendeth, 
and  then  prepare  their  furrows  beneath  His  eye,  and  cast 
27 


418 


TRUE  ME1 Y  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


in  the  immortal  seed  while  calling  upon  His  Name, — how 
rich  and  blessed  Avould  the  harvest  be  !  To  such  toilers,  in 
every  walk  of  the  world  of  letters,  we  could  lovingly  say  : 

“  Sow  with  a  generous  hand  ; 

Pause  not  for  toil  or  pain  ; 

Weary  not  through  the  heat  of  summer. 

Weary  not  through  the  cold  spring  rain  ; 

But  wait  till  the  autumn  comes 
For  the  sheaves  of  golden  grain. 

“  Scatter  the  seed,  and  fear  not, 

A  table  will  he  spread  ; 

What  matter  if  you  are  too  weary 
To  eat  your  hard-earned  bread  : 

Sow  while  the  earth  is  broken. 

For  the  hungry  must  be  fed. 

“  Sow ; — while  the  seeds  are  lying 
In  the  warm  earth’s  bosom  deep. 

Add  your  warm  tears  fall  upon  it — 

They  will  stir  in  their  quiet  sleep  ; 

And  the  green  blades  rise  the  quicker. 

Perchance,  for  the  tears  you  weep. 

“  Sow  :  and  look  onward,  upward. 

Where  the  starry  light  appears  — 

Where,  in  spite  of  the  coward’s  doubting. 

Or  your  own  heart’s  trembling  fears. 

You  shall  reap  in  joy  the  harvest 
You  have  sown  to-day  in  tears.”  * 

A  Noble  Literary  Worlier. 

Not  without  a  purpose  have  we  called  up  from  the  past  the 
figure  of  this  angelic  woman,  to  utter  words  of  cheer  and 
exhortation  that  we  all  need, — we  who  labor  obscurely,  un¬ 
tiringly  in  the  field  of  Truth.  Her  heroic  example  may 
well  fire  the  hearts  both  of  those  who  lead  and  of  those  who 
follow  in  the  serried  ranks  of  literary  workers.  No  less  a 
man  than  Charles  Dickens  has  deemed  it  a  privilege  to 
sketch  a  life  which,  short  as  it  was  (she  died  in  her  thirty- 
ninth  year),  was  wholly  devoted  to  making  her  parents’ 


*  Miss  Procter. 


A  NOBLE  LIFE  NOBLY  ENDED. 


419 


home  delightful,  and  the  homes  of  the  poor  bright  and  con¬ 
tented.  Her  beautiful  poems  seemed  only  the  natural  out¬ 
pourings  of  a  soul  full  of  all  the  divinest  harmonies  of 
earth  and  heaven,  and  given  forth  while  concealing  her 
name  from  the  public, — just  as  the  sweetest  strains  of  the 
nightingale  are  uttered  within  the  darkest  recesses  of  the 
grove. 

“  She  was  exceedingly  humorous  (Dickens  tells  us),  and 
had  a  great  delight  in  humor.  Cheerfulness  was  habitual 
with  her,  she  was  very  ready  at  a  sally  or  a  reply,  and  in 
her  laugh  (as  I  remember  well)  there  was  an  unusual  viva¬ 
city,  enjoyment,  and  sense  of  drollery.  She  was  perfectly 
unconstrained  and  unaffected  ;  as  modestly  silent  about  her 
productions,  as  she  was  generous  with  their  pecuniary  re¬ 
sults.  She  was  a  friend  who  inspired  the  strongest  attach¬ 
ments  ;  she  was  a  finely  sympathetic  woman,  with  a  great 
accordant  heart  and  a  sterling  noble  nature.  No  claim  can 
be  set  up  for  her,  thank  God,  to  the  possession  of  any  of 
the  conventional  poetical  qualities.  She  never  by  any 
means  held  the  opinion  that  she  was  among'  the  greatest  of 
human  beings  ;  she  never  suspected  the  existence  of  a  con¬ 
spiracy  on  the  part  of  mankind  against  her ;  she  never  re¬ 
cognized  in  her  best  friends  her  worst  enemies  ;  she  never 
cultivated  the  luxury  of  being  misunderstood  and  unap¬ 
preciated  ;  she  would  far  rather  have  died  without  seeing 
a  line  of  her  composition  in  print,  than  that  I  should 
have  maundered  about  her,  here,  as  “the  Poet,”  or  “the 
Poetess.”  .  .  . 

“Always  impelled  by  an  intense  conviction  that  her  life 
must  not  be  dreamed  away,  and  that  her  indulgence  in  her 
favorite  pursuits  must  be  balanced  by  action  in  the  real 
world  around  her,  she  was  indefatigable  in  her  endeavors 
to  do  some  good.  Naturally  enthusiastic,  and  conscien¬ 
tiously  impressed  with  a  deep  sense  of  her  Christian  duty 
to  her  neighbor,  she  devoted  herself  to  a  variety  of  benevo¬ 
lent  objects.  Now,  it  was  the  visitation  of  the  siek,  that  had 
possession  of  her ;  now,  it  was  the  sheltering  of  the  house¬ 
less  ;  now,  it  was  the  elementary  teaching  of  the  densely 


420 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


ignorant ;  now,  it  was  tlie  raising  np  of  those  who  had 
wandered  and  got  trodden  under  foot ;  now,  it  was  the  wider 
employment  of  her  own  sex  in  the  general  business  of  life  ; 
now,  it  was  all  these  things  at  once.  Perfectly  unselfish, 
swift  to  sympathize  and  eager  to  relieve,  she  wrought  at 
such  designs  with  a  flushed  earnestness  that  disregarded 
season,  weather,  time  of  day  or  night,  food,  rest.  Under 
such  a  hurry  of  the  spirits,  and  such  incessant  occupation, 
the  strongest  constitution  will  commonly  go  down.  Hers, 
neither  of  the  strongest  nor  the  weakest,  yielded  to  the  bur¬ 
den,  and  began  to  sink. 

4  4  To  have  saved  her  life,  then,  by  taking  action  on  the 
warning  that  shone  in  her  eyes  and  sounded  in  her  voice, 
would  have  been  impossible,  without  changing  her  nature. 
As  long  as  the  power  of  moving  about  in  the  old  way  was 
left  to  her,  she  must  exercise  it,  or  be  killed  by  the  re¬ 
straint.  And  so  the  time  came  when  she  could  move  about 
no  longer,  and  took  to  her  bed. 

44  All  the  restlessness  gone  then,  and  all  the  sweet  patience 
of  her  natural  disposition  purified  by  the  resignation  of  her 
soul,  she  lay  upon  her  bed  through  the  whole  round  of 
changes  of  the  seasons.  She  lay  upon  her  bed  through  fif¬ 
teen  months.  In  all  that  time  her  old  cheerfulness  never 
quitted  her.  In  all  that  time,  not  an  impatient  or  querulous 
minute  can  be  remembered. 

44  At  length,  at  midnight  of  the  second  of  February,  1864, 
she  turned  down  a  leaf  of  a  little  book  *  she  was  reading, 
and  shut  it  up. 

44  The  ministering  hand  that  had  copied  the  verses  into 
the  tiny  album  was  soon  around  her  neck,  and  she  quietly 
asked,  as  the  clock  was  on  the  stroke  of  one : 

4  4  4  Do  you  think  I  am  dying,  mamma  ?  ’ 

4  4  4  1  think  you  are  very,  very  ill  to-night,  my  dear.’ 

4  4  4  Send  for  my  sister.  My  feet  are  so  cold.  Lift  me  up.’ 

44  Her  sister  entering  as  they  raised  her,  she  said  :  4  It  has 
come  at  last !  ’  And  with  a  bright  and  happy  smile,  looked 
upward  and  departed. 


*  “  The  Imitation  of  Christ.” 


LOOK  ONWARD  AND  UPWARD. 


421 


“  Well  had  she  written: 

*  Why  shouldst  thou  fear  the  beautiful  angel,  Death, 

Who  waits  thee  at  the  portal  of  the  skies, 

Ready  to  kiss  away  thy  struggling  breath, 

Ready  with  gentle  hand  to  close  thine  eyes  ? 

*  Oh,  what  were  life,  if  life  were  all  ?  Thine  eyes 
Are  blinded  by  their  tears,  or  thou  wouldst  see 
Thy  treasures  wait  thee  in  the  far-off  skies, 

And  Death,  thy  friend,  will  give  them  all  to  thee.*’” 

We  have  given  this  long  extract  from  the  pen  of  one  who 
liked  not  Catholics, — blinded  as  he  was  by  the  prejudices 
of  early  education  and  of  the  great  English  world  around 
him, — because  it  is  a  heartfelt  tribute  to  the  worth  of  a 
Catholic  lady,  whose  pure  fame  as  a  writer  is  but  the  least 
of  her  merits. 

She  had  followed  to  the  letter,  from  her  earliest  girlhood 
and  her  first  contributions  to  literature,  the  lesson  conveyed 
in  her  own  poem,  “Sowing  and  Reaping”  : 

“  Sow  ;  and  look  onward,  upward, 

Where  the  starry  light  appears — 

Where,  in  spite  of  the  coward’s  doubting, 

Or  your  own  heart’s  trembling  fears, 

You  shall  reap  in  joy  the  harvest 
You  have  sown  to-day  in  tears.” 

No  more  pregnant  lesson  can  be  learned  and  practiced  by 
every  one  of  us,  O  dearest  brothers  of  the  pen  ! 

And  now  what  shall  we  say  to  each  battalion  in  this  vast 
array, — as  you  pass  in  review  before  our  mind’s  eye, — oh, 
you  who  ought  to  be  the  invincible  army  here  below  of  Him 
who  is  called  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  but  who  is  the  Eternal 
Truth,  the  Light  Uncreated,  “a  God  of  all  knowledge,” — 
Deus  Scientiarum  Dominus  ? 

f  T  heological  Writers. 

At  the  head  of  the  magnificent  procession  advance  those 


*From  the  Biography  by  Charles  Dickens,  serving  as  an  introduction  to 
“  Legends  and  Lyrics,”  London,  ed.  1866. 


422 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


who  have  devoted  their  lives  to  the  study  of  their  Divine 
Author  Himself,  and  of  the  relations  which  bind  Him  to  man 
and  the  universe, — and  who  consecrate  their  pens  to  setting 
forth  and  vindicating  Truth  in  its  fountain-head.  Fore¬ 
most  among  the  resplendent  throng  is  he,  the  great  Prophet- 
Legislator,  whose  books  head  the  divinest  of  all  books, — 
the  Bible.  With  his  head  encircled  with  the  intolerable 
light  which  he  drew  from  intimate  converse  with  the  Holy 
One  of  Israel,  he  passes  before  us,  followed  by  Josue,  Samuel, 
David,  and  the  majestic  figures  of  the  Prophets.  And  then 
comes  the  vision  of  the  Mount  of  Transfiguration,  where 
Moses  and  Elias  do  homage  to  the  Word  Incarnate,  and 
beneath  are  Peter  and  James  and  John, — the  eye  of  faith 
grouping  around  the  representatives  of  the  Old  and  the 
New  Testaments,  the  august  succession  of  apostolic  men, 
who  have  continued,  age  after  age,  to  show  forth  to  the  na¬ 
tions  Christ,  the  Way,  the  Truth  and  the  Life.  Oh,  what 
a  glorious  company  of  divine  men  extend  their  ranks  from 
the  illuminated  summit  of  Thabor,  along  the  pathway  of 
humanity  down  to  our  own  day  !  Paul  and  his  great  con¬ 
vert,  the  Areopagite,  Justin-the-Martyr,  Cyprian,  Basil  and 
Gregory  Nazianzen,  Athanasius  and  Chrysostom  and  Am¬ 
brose,  Jerome  and  Augustine,  Gregory  and  Leo,  Bernard 
and  Innocent  III.,  Anselm  and  Aquinas  and  Bonaventure, 
Suarez  and  Francis  of  Sales  and  Liguori !  What  names ! 
And  yet,  as  the  ages  go  slowly  by  before  us,  how  many 
others  no  less  great  in  intellect  and  holy  in  life,  stand  forth 
grouped  around  these  their  illustrious  contemporaries  and 
coadjutors  in  the  cause  of  sacred  truth  ! 

But  from  out  the  saintly  ranks,  as  they  pass,  voices  pro¬ 
ceed  full  of  eloquent  teaching  for  the  soldiers  of  Truth  in 
our  own  time.  Let  us  hearken  to  a  few. 

u  The  words  of  a  priest  are  either  true  or  sacrilegious  :  ” 
Verba  sacerdotis  aut  vera ,  ant  sacrilegaV  * 

Why  is  the  Catholic  priest  detested  ?  Why  is  he  who  an¬ 
nounces  truth  deemed  an  enemy  ?  It  is— replies  St.  Augus¬ 
tine — that  they  love  truth  so  well,  that  all  who  have  another 


*  Fulbert  of  Chartres. 


PREGNANT  TEACHINGS. 


423 


love  wish  that  the  object  of  that  love  should  be  truth  ;  and , 
unwilling  to  be  deceived ,  they  are  not  willing  to  be  con¬ 
vinced  of  their  error ;  therefore  they  hate  him  by  whom  the 
falsehood  of  what  they  love  is  made  manifest.  * 

“But  you,  cliosen  generation,  you  weak  things  of  the 
world  who  have  forsaken  all  things  that  you  might  follow 
the  Lord,  go  after  Him,  and  confound  the  things  which  are 
mighty ;  go  after  Him,  ye  beautiful  feet,  and  shine  in  the 
firmament,  that  the  heavens  may  declare  His  glory.  .  .  . 
Shine  over  all  the  earth,  and  let  the  day,  lightened  by  the 
sun,  utter  unto  day  the  word  of  wisdom  ;  and  let  night, 
shining  by  the  moon,  utter  unto  night  the  word  of  knowl¬ 
edge.  .  .  .  Bun  ye  to  and  fro  everywhere,  ,ye  holy  fires, 
ye  beautiful  fires  ;  for  ye  are  the  light  of  the  world  ;  nor  are 
ye  put  under  a  bushel.  He  to  whom  ye  cleave  is  exalted, 
and  hath  exalted  you.  Bun  ye  to  and  fro,  and  be  known 
unto  all  nations  !  ’ ?  f 

How  the  Light  and  Fire  from  Above  are  Obtained. 

Would  you  learn  the  secret  of  this  supernatural  inspira¬ 
tion,  the  source  of  this  all-consuming  fire  which  burned 
within  the  Doctors  of  the  Holy  Church,  and  enabled  them 
to  illumine  and  inflame  the  world  ?  Take  from  the  hand  of 
yonder  figure  $  who  steps  forth  from  the  crowd,  the  tablet 
he  offers  you,  and  read  : 

Marianus,  an  Irish  monk,  who  founded  a  monastery  at 
Batisbonne,  described  as  surpassing  most  men  in  beauty 
of  countenance  and  simplicity  of  manners,  was  so  venerated 
in  the  school,  that  every  one  felt  assured  he  was  inspired  in 
all  his  works  by  the  Holy  Ghost.  ‘ ‘ He  was  most  remarka¬ 
ble  for  his  diligence  in  writing  on  parchment,  both  for  his 
own  brethren  and  for  others.  Many  large  volumes  were  the 
fruit  of  his  holy  zeal  and  hope  for  an  eternal  recompense. 
Bepeatedly  with  his  own  hand  he  wrote  out  the  whole  of 
the  Bible,  with  its  commentaries.  He  also  wrote  many  little 


*  “Confessions,”  x.  23.  f  Ibidem,  xx.  25  ;  translated  by  Dods. 

%  Raderus,  Bavaria  Sanata,  ii., — quoted  by  Digby,  “Compitum,”  i.,  cb.  x. 


424 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


books  and  psalters  and  manuals  for  poor  widows  and  poor 
clerks  and  scholars  of  the  same  city,  for  the  remedy  of  his 
own  soul ;  and  these  he  gave  them  gratis. 

“It  is  said  that  one  night  the  guardian  forgot  do  give  him 
sufficient  candles  when  he  was  writing  some  divine  volume, 
and  that  he  did  not  hesitate  to  continue  writing  without 
material  light,  the  three  fingers  of  his  left  hand,  by  divine 
mercy,  appearing  to  serve  him  for  lamps.  The  sacristan, 
when  in  bed,  recollected  his  omission,  and  rose  up  to  carry 
candles  to  his  cell,  when  through  the  chinks  of  the  door  he 
beheld  him  writing  with  the  aid  of  this  celestial  light. 
Aventinus  styles  him  a  poet  and  a  theologian,  second  to 
none  of  his  age.” 

This  anecdote  comes  to  us  from  the  mountains  of  Bavaria 
like  the  odor  of  violets  culled  along  the  head- waters  of  the 
Inn,  the  Isar,  and  the  Lech  long  centuries  ago,  and  serving 
to  embalm  a  holy  memory.  One  or  two  more  fragrant  flow¬ 
erets  from  saintly  hands,  and  we  shall  fix  our  attention  on 
the  next  band  in  the  procession. 

Quid  est  victoria  veritatis,  nisi  charitas  f  asks  the  same 
great  son  of  Monica,  as  he  disappears  amid  the  starry  mul¬ 
titude  of  his  fellows.  “For  what  do  the  soldiers  of  Truth 
do  battle,  if  it  be  not  to  secure  the  triumph  of  Charity?” 
Hear  you  this,  O  brethren,  who  strive  so  heroically  to  make 
Truth  victorious  ?  And,  you  who  are  so  anxious  to  heal  the 
wounds  of  Christendom,  to  reunite  all  minds  and  hearts  be¬ 
neath  the  sway  of  the  Great  Mother,  lay  up  these  words  in 
your  memory,  and  with  them  treasure  this  saying  of  the 
latest  and  most  loving  soul  among  that  shining  galaxy  of 
Doctors  :  “Truth  that  is  not  charitable,  comes  from  a  cha¬ 
rity  that  is  not  veritable.”  * 

And  now  comes  Philosophy,  the  venerable  parent  of  all 
true  science. 

We  do  not  mean  to  separate  true  philosophy,  from  true 
science.  The  philosopher  professes  to  explain  all  things  by 
means  of  their  deepest  and  most  hidden  causes.  He,  there- 

*  St.  Francis  of  Sales  :  La  verite  qui  n’est  pas  charitable  vient  d’une  charite  qui 
n’est  pas  veritable . 


WHAT  TRUE  PHILOSOPHY  TEACHES. 


425 


fore,  endeavors  to  push  his  analysis  of  the  universe  to  its 
very  center, — to  pluck  out  the  heart  of  Knowledge  and  lay 
its  secrets  bare  to  the  eye  of  all.  Three  mighty  mysteries 
invite  his  speculations, — God,  man,  and  the  material  world. 
He  would  fain  say  on  each  of  these  all  that  can  be  said, — so 
that  the  veil  should  be  lifted  forever  on  the  nature  of  the 
Infinite  Godhead,  on  that  of  man,  half -spiritual,  half -ani¬ 
mal  as  it  is,  and  on  that  of  matter  in  its  intimate  constitu¬ 
tion,  its  forces,  and  its  duration. 

Thus  Philosophy  professes  to  expose  to  its  pupils  the 
constitutive  principles  or  elements  of  all  existing  things, 
their  relations  toward  each  other,  the  laws  which  mind 
has  to  follow  in  acquiring  this  knowledge,  and  -the  tests 
by  which  it  may  discern  certainty  from  uncertainty,  truth 
from  its  counterfeit,  error. 

Before  Christ  the  schools  of  Eastern  Europe,  of  Africa, 
and  Asia,  sought,  century  after  century,  to  disclose  to  the 
world  the  secret  of  the  Divine  Nature,  its  existence,  and  its 
attributes, — the  nature,  origin,  and  powers  of  the  soul  of 
man, — and  the  origin  and  destiny  of  the /visible  universe. 
They  were  earnest  men,  these  seekers  after  the  highest  truth, 
and  generation  after  generation  of  them  applied  themselves 
to  their  laborious  quest  with  an  ardor  and  a  perseverance 
in  keeping  with  their  lofty  purpose,  and  deserving  of  more 
satisfactory  results.  Like  our  Western  miners, — they  knew 
from  the  fragments  of  gold  at  the  surface  or  those  borne 
down  from  the  uplands  in  the  river  courses, — that  there  was 
beneath  them  somewhere  an  exhaustless  vein  of  the  pre¬ 
cious  ore.  And  so,  they  sought,  and  explored,  and  tor¬ 
mented  the  surface  of  the  earth  on  every  side,  by  night  as 
well  as  by  day,  band  of  resolute  workers  succeeding  wearied 
band, — till  they  concluded  that  gold  there  was  none. 

Christian  Philosophy ,  the  Parent  of  True  Science. 

We  know  how  fragmentary  were  the  truths  discovered  or 
held  by  these  indefatigable  investigators  of  old.  At  length 
Christianity  arose,  completing  the  divine  knowledge  con- 


426 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


tained  in  the  books  of  Moses  on  the  origin  of  the  material 
universe,  on  man’s  beginning  and  final  destinies,  and  on 
that  Eternal  and  Uncreated  Being,  the  sole  author  of  all 
created  things. 

The  long-sought  truth  was  thus  disclosed  in  its  deep  native 
bed,  and  the  lamp  of  Revelation  shed  a  clear  and  steady  light 
on  the  magnificent  realities,  so  dimly  perceived  and  obscure¬ 
ly  spoken  of  by  Greeks,  Egyptians,  Persians,  and  Brahmins. 

In  the  light  of  the  Christian  Philosophy, — that  is,  of 
Reason  guided  and  illumined  by  Faith, — man  was  told 
what  satisfied  his  innate  curiosity  to  know  clearly  whence 
he  came  and  whither  he  tends,  and  who  is  the  mighty  First 
Cause  of  “the  existence  of  this  vast  universe. 

Thereby  was  a  firm  basis  given  for  all  further  investiga¬ 
tion  of  nature  and  its  Divine  Author.  To  measure  the  im¬ 
mense  progress  made  by  philosophical  truth  since  the  dawn 
of  Christianity,  as  compared  with  the  most  complete  results 
reached  in  the  pagan-world,  one  has  only  to  compare  Plato 
and  Aristotle, — prodigies  both  of  them, — with  the  majestic 
theological  and  *  philosophical  edifices  reared  by  Thomas 
Aquinas  in  the  thirteenth  century,  and  by  Francisco  Suarez 
in  the  sixteenth. 

The  ripest  scholar  who  cannot  find  on  the  lofty  subjects 
most  deserving  of  man’s  study,  knowledge  enough  to  satisfy 
his  understanding  or  to  guide  and  help  him  surely  toward 
still  greater  heights, — must  have  a  mind  ill-constituted  or 
ill-disciplined.  Even  Leibnitz, — the  greatest  and  most  ac¬ 
complished  genius  among  Protestants, — declared  at  the  end 
of  his  life,  and  after  having  devoted  his  great  powers  to  the 
exhaustive  study  of  the  subject, — that  he  could  not  help 
considering  the  principles  of  the  Mediaeval  Scholastics  on 
matter,  its  forces,  and  forms,  as  the  most  satisfactory  to 
his  mind.  And  in  our  own  day,  scientists  the  most  opposed 
not  only  to  Catholic  teaching,  but  even  to  the  very  exist¬ 
ence  of  immaterial  spirits  in  the  universe,  are  forced  to  up¬ 
hold,  though  in  a  different  terminology,  the  once  derided 
scholastic  systems  on  matter  and  its  properties. 

We  are  in  presence  of  these  great  geniuses  of  the  Catho 


THE  GALAXY  OF  CHRISTIAN  PHILOSOPHERS. 


427 


lie,  the  Christian  world, — men  of  angelic  life,  in  whom  was 
verified  the  saying  of  the  Master  :  “  Blessed  are  the  clean 
of  heart,  for  they  shall  see  God.”  Men  of  the  world  im¬ 
mersed  in  the  pleasures  of  sense,  Christian  men,  even,  who 
do  not  habituate  themselves  to  self-denial,  cannot  know — 
though  they  may  understand — how  immensely  abstinence 
from  sensual  gratification  and  purity  of  soul  dispose  the 
mind  to  see  clearly  and  to  see  far  into  those  luminous  depths 
where  Truth  abides,  and  where  the  chaste  eye  of  the  soul  is 
given  to  behold  so  much  of  the  great  Primal  Cause  and  in 
Him,  of  the  causal  relation  He  holds  to  the  entire  world  of 
mind  and  matter !  Are  we  venturing  too  high  above  the 
common  ken  ?  Let  us  come  back  to  earth,  then. 

Science  should  not  play  Phaeton. 

Only, — to  writers  on  intellectual  philosophy,  almost  as 
much  as  to  scientists  dealing  with  matter  and  its  evolu¬ 
tions, — we  would  say  one  warning  word.  In  metaphysical 
investigations,  as  in  those  of  the  geologist  or  biologist, — 
there  are  broad  pathways  along  which  all  the  great  minds 
of  the  past  have  traveled,  not  blindly  and  without  thor¬ 
oughly  exploring  for  themselves  every  stage  of  their  pro¬ 
gress,  and  accounting  for  all  the  phenomena  observed  at 
every  step.  There  is  a  “common  sense”  which  must  guide 
the  greatest  genius  as  he  advances  in  any  field  of  observa¬ 
tion  or  research,  and  which  he  cannot  set  aside  without  ex¬ 
posing  himself  to  the  risk  of  straying  from  the  truth — the 
right  direction, — and  of  leading  others,  who  follow  him, 
astray.  Let  us  illustrate  our  meaning. 

Philosophical  Formulas ,  Snares  for  the  Philosopher . 

We,  Americans  here  in  this  New  World,  as  Europeans 
in  the  most  civilized  lands  of  ancient  Christendom, — have 
followed  with  mixed  curiosity  and  amazement  certain  fa¬ 
mous  disquisitions  about  the  origin  in  the  mind  and  the  real 
value  in  the  world  of  experience  of  intuitive  notions  and 
primary  principles  of  knowledge.  Gioberti  mixed  up  his 
metaphysics  with  his  religion  and  his  politics, — formulated 


428  TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

liis  views  in  a  few  brief  and  pregnant  apothegms,  which, 
he  said,  contained  as  certainly  the  scientific  equation  of  all 
philosophy,  religion,  and  history, — as  the  algebraic  formula 
S  =  gt2  expresses  the  laws  of  velocity  in  falling  bodies.  His 
formulas,  however,  which  were  pressed  for  adoption  upon 
American  scholars  as  earnestly  and  persistently  as  if  they 
defined  unquestionable  dogmas  of  philosophical  faith,  were 
either  radically  modified  or  altogether  abandoned  by  the 
author  himself  in  his  last  writing.* 

Even  so,  the  various  hypotheses,  which  were  adopted,  at 
different  successive  epochs,  to  explain  the  motions  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  were  advocated  as  so  many  scientific 
truths  by  their  authors,  and  successively  modified  or  aban¬ 
doned.  At  the  present  moment,  science  proposes,  uses, 
adopts,  or  abandons  many  such  hypotheses  in  stellar  and 
physical  astronomy, — showing  by  her  cautious  use  of  for¬ 
mulas  and  general  conclusions,  that  in  all  fields  of  observa¬ 
tion  inductions  must  not  be  broader  than  the  phenomena 
observed. 

Would  that  our  ideologists,  our  geologists  and  our  evo¬ 
lutionists  were  equally  cautious,  reserved,  and  rational  in 
the  conclusions  they  draw  from  imperfectly  observed  phe¬ 
nomena,  or  in  the  hypotheses  they  press  upon  us  as  demon¬ 
strated  certainties ! 

When  a  child  follows  a  trusted  guide  away  from  the  broad 
highway  and  the  light  of  the  sun  to  explore  some  mar¬ 
velous  underground  cave,  child  though  he  be,  his  instinc¬ 
tive  good  sense  warns  him  to  go  no  farther,  when  he  finds 
the  air  of  the  cave  become  unfit  to  breathe  as  they  advance  ; 
— or  when  the  lamp  in  the  hand  of  his  guide  goes  out, — 
both  man  and  boy  will  deem  it  high  time  to  retrace  their 
steps  back  to  God’s  pure  vital  air  and  the  light  of  day. 

So  it  is  with  your  theories,  or  your  inductive  systems ; 
when  you  find  that  they  lead  you  to  results  that  are  as  dan¬ 
gerous  to  faith  and  morality  as  mephitic  air  is  to  the  lungs, 
— then  be  sure  you  have  gone  too  far  in  the  wrong  direc- 


*  See  Mr.  Botta’s  analysis  of  Gioberti’s  Philosophy  in  “  Ueberweg’s  History 
of  Philosophy,”  vol.  ii. .  page  502. 


THE  SUNLIGHT  THE  SAFEST  LIGHT 


429 


tion.  Or  when  the  lamp  of  reason  and  common  sense  re¬ 
fuses  to  shed  further  light  on  the  darkness  before  you,  go 
back  to  the  broad  sunlight  of  true  science. 

O  most  unwise  Philosophy,  O  most  unreasoning  Science, 
why  so  impatient  of  that  Revealed  Truth  which  has  been 
the  sun  of  the  civilized  world  for  so  many  pregnant  cen¬ 
turies,  which  has  been  the  chaste  light  of  the  homes  of  our 
fathers,  and  warmed  their  hearts  to  deeds  of  divinest  cha¬ 
rity  and  heroic  self-denial  ?  And  do  you  wish  us  to  prefer 
the  feeble,  uncertain,  short-lived  glimmer  of  your  two-penny 
candle  to  God’ s  unquenchable  sun  in  the  firmament  1 

“  And  delving  in  the  outworks  of  this  world. 

And  little  crevices  that  it  could  reach, 

Discovered  certain  bones  laid  up,  and  furled 
Under  an  ancient  beach, 

And  other  waifs  that  lay  to  its  young  mind 
Some  fathoms  lower  than  they  ought  to  lie. 

By  gain  whereof  it  could  not  fail  to  find 
Much  proof  of  ancientry, 

Hints  at  a  pedigree  withdrawn  and  vast. 

Terrible  deeps,  and  old  obscurities. 

Or  soulless  origin,  and  twilight  passed 
In  the  primeval  seas, 

Whereof  it  tells,  as  thinking  it  hath  been 
Of  truth  not  meant  for  man  inheritor  ; 

As  if  this  knowledge  Heaven  had  ne’er  foreseen 
And  not  provided  for  ! 

Knowledge  ordained  to  live  !  although  the  fate 
Of  much  that  went  before  it  was — to  die. 

And  be  called  ignorance  by  such  as  wait 
Till  the  next  drift  comes  by. 

O  marvelous  credulity  of  ican  ! 

If  God  indeed  kept  secret,  couldst  thou  know 
Or  follow  up  the  mighty  Artisan 
Unless  he  willed  it  so  ?  .  .  . 

But  if  He  keeps  not  secret— if  thine  eyes 
He  openetli  to  His  wondrous  work  of  late — 

Think  how  in  soberness  thy  wisdom  lies. 

And  have  the  grace  to  wait. 

Wait, — nor  against  the  half-learned  lesson  fret, 

Nor  chide  at  old  belief  as  if  it  erred, 

Because  thou  canst  not  reconcile  as  yet 
The  Worker  and  the  word.”  * 


*  Jean  Ingelow. 


430 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


Journalists. 

It  is  but  truth  to  say  that  journalism  is  the  mightiest 
force  of  the  moral  world, — always,  of  course,  leaving  out  of 
comparison  that  Almighty  Power,  which  allows  human 
liberty  and  human  intelligence  free  scope  for  their  action, 
just  as  it  allows  the  ocean  currents  to  play  within  their 
deep  and  wide  bed,  and  the  winds  to  come  and  go  in  their 
courses,  subject  only  to  the  Sovereign  Will  whose  control 
all  must  obey. 

We  speak,  in  the  first  place,  of  secular  journalism,  com¬ 
pared  with  which,  as  a  power,  that  of  religious  journalism 
is  what  the  mass  and  influence  of  the  least  satellite  of 
Saturn  are  to  the  mighty  globe  of  the  Sun. 

Yes,  secular  journalism  is  the  mightiest  of  moral  forces 
outside  of  the  incomparable  power  for  good  of  the  Church 
of  the  Living  God.  Compared  with  the  attraction  which 
she  exercises,  to  her  civilizing,  sanctifying,  and  creative  in¬ 
fluence  during  her  existence  of  more  than  eighteen  cen¬ 
turies, — every  moral  force  mentioned  in  the  records  of  hu¬ 
manity  apjDears  trifling  and  short-lived. 

The  journalist  by  profession  is,  therefore,  among  the 
toilers  of  the  pen,  he  who  can  do  most  good  or  most  evil, 
according  as  he  makes  a  right  or  a  wrong  use  of  his  power 
and  opportunities.  And,  assuredly,  the  profession  is  among 
the  most  laborious  in  the  whole  range  of  literature. 

W e  would  fain  say  a  heartfelt  word  of  appreciation  and 
sympathy  to  those  knights  of  the  daily  press,  whose  untiring 
devotion  and  unflagging  industry  are  as  little  known  to  the 
public  they  serve  as  the  results  of  their  labor  are  applauded. 

Need  we  mention  the  men  who,  single-handed,  and  ob¬ 
scure,  have  succeeded  in  founding  some  of  our  foremost 
daily  newspaj)ers  %  How  many  among  these  have  been  in¬ 
spired  by  the  example  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  editing,  at 
the  age  of  sixteen  and  while  still  an  apprentice,  “The  New 
England  Courant,”  instead  of  his  brother  James,  and  found¬ 
ing  in  his  own  name  and  at  his  own  risk  the  ‘  ‘  Pennsylvania 
Gazette,”  at  the  age  of  twenty-two  !  Assuredly,  if  it  is 


TEE  MIGHTY  FORCE  OF  JOURNALISM. 


431 


honorable  by  life-long  thrift,  energy,  honesty,  and  sagacity, 
to  be  able  to  amass  a  fortune  counted  by  millions,  and  to 
establish  a  great  commercial  or  industrial  business  that  is 
the  admiration  of  the  whole  civilized  world, — it  is  no  less  so, 
nay,  it  is,  in  our  judgment,  much  more  so  to  create  a  great 
daily  journal  and  to  make  it  not  only  a  pecuniary  success, 
but  a  national  institution,  a  mighty  vehicle  for  the  commu¬ 
nication  of  true  enlightenment. 

It  was  deemed  a  gigantic  and  almost  a  visionary  scheme  to 
tunnel  the  Alps  beneath  Mount  Cenis,  and  to  attempt  to 
open  a  ship-canal  across  the  Isthmus  of  Suez,  thus  empty¬ 
ing  the  waters  of  the  Mediterranean  into  the  Red  Sea,  and 
opening  a  new,  shorter,  and  safer  highway  to  commerce 
between  Europe  and  Farther  Asia.  Surely  a  great  journal 
that  serves  as  the  daily  vehicle  of  news  and  interchange  of 
thought  between  widely  separated  divisions  of  the  human 
family,  is  a  something  e4ually  glorious  to  the  man  who  con¬ 
ceived  and  achieved  its  establishment.  An  accident  may 
block  up  to-morrow  the  tunnel  between  France  and  Italy, 
or  the  desert  sands  may  render  the  great  ship-canal  unnavi- 
gable.  But  no  earthquake,  no  power  of  wind  or  waves  or 
moving  sands,  can  mar  a  great  and  successful  newspaper. 

Its  prosperity  and  ever-growing  usefulness  depend  solely 
on  the  talent,  the  sagacity,  the  indomitable  application  of 
the  little  army  of  literary  men  who  carry  it  on.  And  it  is 
for  the  encouragement  and  direction  of  these  that  we  are 
desirous  of  making  a  few  timely  remarks. 

The  Noble  Aims  and  Uses  of  Journalism. 

We  are  perfectly  aware  that  we  cannot,  in  justice  to  our 
own  definite  purpose,  here  discuss  the  various  classes  of 
daily  and  periodical  journalism.  We  are  concerned  solely 
with  the  great  daily  secular  newspaper,  which  not  only  fur¬ 
nishes  to  its  reader  the  most  recent  and  trustworthy  infor¬ 
mation  on  every  possible  topic  of  interest,  but  reviews  all 
the  important  events  in  the  world  of  politics,  science,  litera¬ 
ture,  art,  and  commerce. 


432 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM r. 


The  great  daily  newspaper,  then,  is  in  itself  an  abridged 
history  of  the  world’s  life  for  each  day.  The  question, 
therefore,  is  for  a  true  man  having  the  control  of  this  daily 
record  of  the  wor]d  around  him,  whether  he  shall,  like  the 
conscientious  painter,  present  to  the  public  only  such  mat¬ 
ters  and  aspects  of  real  life  as  are  calculated  to  instruct  and 
to  improve,  or,  like  the  worst  school  of  Realists,  depict  in¬ 
discriminately  the  good  and  the  evil,  virtue  and  vice,  heroism 
and  depravity,  the  most  ennobling  deeds  and  recitals,  or 
the  most  loathsome  and  defiling  scenes  from  human  nature 
fallen  and  hideous  in  its  moral  ugliness. 

We  suppose  the  ideal  journalist  whom  we  have  now  here 
before  us,  to  have  been  blessed  with  a  mother  as  careful  of 
his  purity  of  soul,  while  yet  under  her  care,  as  of  her  own 
hopes  of  eternal  salvation, — as  watchful  to  keep  away  from 
the  eyes  and  ears  of  her  boys  and  girls  every  book,  publi¬ 
cation,  picture,  sight,  or  conversation,  that  could  make 
their  unsullied  minds  suspect  the  existence  of  moral  evil, — 
as  she  would  have  been  watchful  to  keep  the  deadliest 
poison  from  their  food,  or  lire  and  flame  from  the  white 
curtains  of  the  crib  or  the  bed  in  which  her  darlings  re¬ 
posed.  What  journalist,  what  noble-souled  man  could 
wish  his  mother  to  have  been  other  than  this  in  her  loving 
and  jealous  care  of  his  childhood  and  boyhood’s  innocence  ? 

We  suppose,  further,  that  this  boy,  so  tenderly  cared  for, 
and  become,  perhaps,  a  journalist  and  a  true  man  through 
this  very  nurture,  has  now  a  wife  and  children  infinitely 
dear  to  him.  He  has  chosen  his  wife  because  he  thought 
he  had  discovered  in  her  the  living  image  of  his  mother, — 
who,  in  her  turn,  would  be  sure  to  do  for  his  children  what 
had  been  done  for  himself, — keep  their  souls  and  their  lives 
from  the  thought  or  the  approach  of  evil  as  long  as  they 
remained  in  her  Home-Paradise. 

Have  you  not  still,  after  so  many  years  of  married  life,  so 
tender,  so  jealous  a  care  of  your  wife’s  innocence  and  of 
her  absolute  ignorance  of  the  evil  world  you  know  of, — that 
nothing  could  induce  you  to  break  in  upon  her  happy 
dream  of  ignorance,  or  to  lift  the  veil  that  covers  from  her 


JOURNALISM  SHOULD  PURIFY  THE  DRAMA. 


433 


pure  eyes  the  dark  depths  of  that  same  outside  world  with 
their  hideous  forms  of  sin  and  shame  ?  Is  it  not  one  of  the 
deepest  joys  of  your  life  to  keep  ever  before  the  minds  of 
your  children  that  other  serene,  lightsome,  angelic  world, 
which  is  only  a  distant  vision,  beheld  through  the  mists  of 
sense,  of  that  world  of  purity,  peace,  imperishable  beauty, 
and  glory  unfading  that  we  were  all  created  for?  Have 
you  never  told  your  own  heart,  or  told  wife  and  children, 
during  your  brief  intervals  of  heart-rest  at  home, — that  the 
unseen  world  is  the  only  real  world, —  the  world  of  un¬ 
changeable  and  eternal  realities  ? 

What  your  Wife  and  Children  should  not  read. 

And  now  take  up  one  of  the  great  daily  journals  in  a 
vast  metropolis  either  of  the  Western  or  the  Eastern  hemi¬ 
sphere.  Here  is  one  before  us, — let  us  look  at  it  calmly, 
being  both  men  who  have  had  a  most  varied  experience  of 
human  vicissitudes.  Well,  here,  in  one  sheet  of  this  morn¬ 
ing  paper,  thrown  into  our  homes  before  the  breakfast  hour, 
is  an  entire  page, — containing  in  print  matter  sufficient  for 
one  hundred  pages  of  this  book, — filled,  two- thirds  of  it, 
with  details  of  the  most  revolting  immorality,  and  the  re¬ 
mainder  pertaining  to  the  drama  and  the  stage,  reciting 
what  is  scarcely,  if  at  all,  less  objectionable  to  the  pure- 
minded. 

Would  you  read  to  your  wife,  at  table  and  during  the 
meal  on  which  you  both  with  your  children  invoked  the 
blessing  of  the  Most  Holy  God, — this  dreadful  tale  of  wife- 
murder  and  suicide  committed  in  presence  of  the  three 
hapless  children  of  such  parents,  and  committed  through 
jealousy  ?  And  would  you  allow  your  innocents  to  hear  the 
shocking  details  of  the  immorality  with  which  the  murderer 
had  accused  his  victim,  and  with  which  she  in  her  turn  had 
taunted  the  fiend  she  called  husband  ?  Would  you,  after 
exhausting  this  dreadful  tale,  continue  to  depict  murder 
after  murder,  one  more  odious  crime  succeeding  another, 
till  the  very  atmosphere  of  your  breakfast-room  seemed 
28 


434 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TIIEM. 


tainted  with  the  odor  of  the  charnel-house  or  the  Pit,  and 
the  very  bread  and  tea  on  your  table  seemed  to  savor  of 
human  blood  ? 

You  may  belong  to  the  Realistic  School  in  art, — but  such 
realities,  you  must  confess,  are  not  such  as  you  would  will¬ 
ingly  submit  to  the  eye  of  mother  or  sister,  of  wife  or  chil¬ 
dren  ; — nay,  you  would  blush  to  read  them  to  your  father, 
your  brother,  or  your  friend. 

What  your  W ife  and  Children  should  never  see. 

But  from  this  perversion  of  one  of  the  most  sacred  offices 
of  journalism, — turn  we  to  the  remainder  of  the  page  be¬ 
fore  us.  Its  matter  relates  to  an  art,  scarcely  less  noble, — if 
faithful  to  its  original  destination, — than  that  of  the  jour¬ 
nalist.  See  how  the  reviews  and  notices  here  presented  of 
the  drama  and  the  stage,  are  as  unfit  for  the  eye  of  your 
wife  and  your  daughter,  as  were  the  dark  deeds  of  the 
murderer,  the  suicide,  the  highwayman,  the  forger,  or  the 
absconding  cashier. 

The  dramatic  art  like  that  of  the  journalist  aims,  in  its 
sole  legitimate  and  praiseworthy  sphere,  to  make  men  good, 
and  to  make  the  good  better  by  setting  forth  ennobling  ex¬ 
amples  and  heroic  deeds,  by  inspiring  respect  for  religion 
and  virtue,  much  more  than  by  creating  a  hatred  and  hor¬ 
ror  of  vice. 

Here  is  a  theatrical  manger  whose  only  care  is  to  fill  his 
house  daily,  and  who  cares  nothing  about  the  means  of  at¬ 
traction,  provided  the  public  are  enticed  to  fill  his  seats  and 
his  boxes  from  floor  to  ceiling.  He  finds  that  the  latest  pro¬ 
ductions  of  the  French  dramatists  have  for  the  sensualist, 
the  pleasure -seeker,  the  man  whose  mind  is  skeptical  and 
whose  heart  is  loveless, — for  the  woman  who  is  without  con¬ 
science,  principle,  or  virtue,  the  same  flavor  that  highly- 
spiced  meats  have  for  the  depraved  palate ; — and  so,  they 
get  some  venal  pen, — a  pen  that  would  write  for  Beelzebub, 
if  Beelzebub  paid  for  it  in  gold  or  in  honest  “  greenbacks,” 
and  this  pen  does  the  devil’s  work  of  transforming  a  bad 


P  RE  VARICA  TION. 


435 


French  play  into  a  worse  English  one.  Hence  your  “New 
Magdalen’s”  et  toute  cette  inondation  defangeWoutre-mer! 

We  must  not,  however,  be  too  hard  on  the  French.  Low 
as  French  dramatic  art  is  fallen,  Satanic  as  its  ideal  seems 
so  often  to  be, — there  is  still  art  in  the  conception  and  treat¬ 
ment  of  each  unworthy  subject,  and  very  often  exquisite 
art  in  the  diction.  And,  besides,  the  French  drama  may  be  a 
truthful  picture  of  French  society,' — though  not,  assuredly, 
of  that  noble  French  society  we  have  known,  loved,  and 
admired  ;  and,  most  assuredly,  is  French  drama  no  real  pic¬ 
ture  at  all  of  any  one  class  or  phase  of  American  or  English 
society. 

But  here, — among  criticisms  of  other  dramatic  patchwork, 
— is  the  elaborate  review  of  a  society -play  modeled  on  the 
objectionable  French  pattern,  which  is  condemned  by  good 
critics  as  irredeemably  bad, — not  pretending  to  any  high 
moral  purpose,  but  pandering  to  the  lowest  appetites  of  the 
most  abandoned  siglit-seers,  and,  confessedly,  without  the 
slightest  claim  to  artistic  merit  or  literary  excellence  in  plot, 
execution,  or  style, — its  only  charm  in  this  respect  being  the 
incessant  play  of  double  meaning, — tickling  the  prurient 
fancy,  as  continual  bubbles  of  mephitic  gas  from  a  stagnant 
pool  offend  the  sense  of  the  passers-by. 

And  yet  this  production,  so  devoid  of  every  one  of  the 
qualities  of  true  art,  so  contrary  to  all  the  ideals  of  art  that 
is  purifying  and  elevating, — is  praised  by  the  journalist  be¬ 
fore  us  and  his  critic,  and  thus  recommended  as  a  legiti¬ 
mate  amusement  to  the  pure-minded  wives  and  innocent 
daughters  of  our  American  homes  ! 

Which  of  these  departures  from  the  duty  and  office  of  the 
true  journalist,  deserves  the  severest  animadversion, — the 
revealing  to  the  mind  of  the  sinless,  unsuspecting  young 
reader  of  all  these  horrible  mysteries  of  crime  ?  or  the  in¬ 
viting  (by  implication)  the  mothers  and  children  of  our 
hitherto  simple  and  pure  American  homes,  to  admire  on  the 
stage  men  and  women  belonging  to  the  demi-monde ,  or  to 
a  world  and  a  society  which  are  not  the  abode  of  truth, 
purity,  domestic  virtue,  or  public  worth  ? 


486 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


Treat  Religion  most  Reverently. 

Then,  take  the  matter  of  Religion,  so  dear  to  all  American 
homes,  in  spite  of  their  deep  differences  of  belief,  and  of 
the  entire  freedom  guaranteed  by  law  and  granted  by  the 
temper  of  our  people  on  religious  questions.  Where  a 
secular  journal  speaks  of  such  matters,  one  expects  that  it 
shall  be  done  calmly  and  respectfully,  without  entering  into 
the  merits  of  doctrines,  or  pronouncing  judicially  on  points 
which  cannot  be  fully  known  to  the  writer. 

It  is  bad  policy  as  well  as  bad  taste  to  sadden  or  irritate 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  homes,  where  time-honored 
doctrines  are  still  held  dearer  than  life,  and  where  venera¬ 
ble  religious  authorities,  held  up  by  the  journalist  to  ridi¬ 
cule  or  contempt  or  hatred,  are  still  regarded  with  deep,  and 
conscientious  reverence.  It  cannot  be  well,  under  plea  of 
liberality,  or  freedom  of  opinion  and  judgment,  to  wound 
daily  millions  of  your  fellow-citizens  in  their  most  tender 
part,  because  the  wrong  done  thereby  to  one  great  religious 
body  may  make  your  paper  more  acceptable  to  all  the  hos¬ 
tile  denominations. 

There  is  a  loftier  principle  involved  here  than  your  pre¬ 
tended  freedom  of  thought  and  judgment,  albeit  no  one 
asks  you  to  communicate  to  the  world  in  oracular  form  the 
opinions  you  have  formed  and  the  judgments  you  have  ar¬ 
rived  at ;  you  are  perfectly  free  to  form  and  entertain  them, 
but  it  were  wise  not  to  be  so  free  in  giving  them  publicity. 
This  sacred  principle  is, — not  to  make  Religion  less  holy, 
less  worshipful,  less  dear  to  your  own  children  by  placing 
prominently  before  them  the  dissensions  that  reign  between 
churches  or  between  the  members  of  the  same  church,  the 
failings  and  faults  of  this  prominent  minister  of  a  certain 
church  to-day,  and  to-morrow,  as  an  offset,  the  weaknesses 
and  guilt  of  ministers  of  a  rival  creed.  Thereby  you  im¬ 
press  the  minds  of  the  young  with  the  conviction  that  there 
is  “no  balm  in  Gilead,”  no  virtue  in  Religion  itself  to 
make  men  good  and  keep  them  good, — and  so,  Religion  is 
brought  into  contempt.  For,  it  is  the  logic  of  human 


DO  NOT  KILL  REVERENCE  IN  THE  MIND . 


437 


nature  to  identify  the  minister  with  the  creed  that  he  ex¬ 
pounds,  and  to  extend  to  the  altars  at  which  he  sacrifices 
the  odium  begotten  by  his  own  unworthiness.  It  is  an  in¬ 
justice,  moreover,  to  the  majority  of  edifying,  self-sacri¬ 
ficing,  exemplary  men  who  belong  to  the  sacred  ministry  to 
cast  on  their  unstained  robes  the  deep  soil  that  has  fallen 
on  the  vestments  of  the  few. 

Hide  your  Criminals  :  Deify  your  Heroes. 

For  the  one  unfortunate  whose  sad  death  and  downward 
career  you  chronicled  yesterday  and  held  up  as  a  warning, 
— not  to  his  brethren,  who  do  not  need  it, — but  to  your  own 
children  and  to  the  entire  reading  public,  who  are  disedified 
by  it,— you  might  point  to-day  to  those  devoted  bands  of 
priests  who  replace  each  other  near  the  plague-stricken  citi¬ 
zens  of  New  Orleans,  Vicksburg,  Memphis,  and  Grenada, 
— brother  taking  the  place  of  dead  brother  in  the  foremost 
post  of  danger  and  duty.  Were  our  own  city — which  God 
forbid — to  be  visited  to-morrow  by  the  dread  southern 
scourge,  you  who  have  penned  these  offensive,  injurious, 
and  unjust  articles,  would  be  the  first  to  laud  to  the  skies 
the  courage  and  heroism  of  the  ministers  of  Religion  in  the 
hour  of  man’s  sorest  need.  Were  the  Angel  of  Death  to 
knock  suddenly  at  your  own  door,  whose  hand  would  you 
grasp  more  lovingly  and  gratefully,  as  you  felt  life  and 
this  fair  earth  withdrawn  suddenly  from  you,  and  stood  on 
the  brink  of  the  dark  abyss  of  eternity  ?  Whose  voice 
would  be  most  welcome  to  your  ear  ?  or  wake  more  surely 
in  your  soul  the  pulses  of  immortal  hope  in  the  God  of  your 
childhood  \ 

No  !  You  should  never  tolerate  that  any  one  of  those  who 
cooperate  with  you  in  your  mighty  labors,  should  directly 
or  indirectly  throw  suspicion  or  disrespect  on  what  is  and 
must  ever  be  the  dearesc  treasure  of  our  hearts  and  homes, 
— the  Religion  of  our  Fathers. 

This  may  suffice.  There  are  so  many  rich  and  vast  fields 
of  knowledge  and  varied  interest  open  to  journalism,  such 


438 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


deep  mines  of  useful  and  delightful  information  that  re¬ 
main  to  be  discovered  or  thoroughly  explored,  and  from 
which  you  can  daily  draw  an  exhaustless  supply  for  your 
readers  !  To  the  generous  enterprise  of  our  great  journals, 
to  their  splendid  achievements  in  more  than  one  depart¬ 
ment  of  science  and  literature,  we  are  proud  and  happy  to 
bear  our  humble  tribute  of  praise  and  gratitude.  It  is  mar¬ 
velous  to  see  what  a  feat  is  accomplished  by  the  journalist 
in  every  one  of  his  issues, — and  what  a  boundless  store  of 
information  is  placed  at  the  disposal  of  every  reader  for  the 
merest  trifle  !  Are  we  insensible  to  the  prodigious  amount 
of  labor  that  the  collecting  of  such  a  store  required  %  No, 
indeed.  Nor  do  we  belong  in  mind  or  heart  to  any  other 
world  than  the  beautiful  world  which  is  our  own,  or  repine 
for  past  ages  because  the  present  contains  ills  that  we  de¬ 
plore.  We  are  of  our.  age  and  country.  We  would  fain 
make  the  country  the  most  glorious  that  ever  the  sun  shone 
upon,  and  the  age  the  most  fruitful  in  Godlike  deeds  and 
heroic  manhood. 

To  this  result  the  true  journalist  can  contribute  im7 
mensely ; — and,  in  all  that  we  have  presumed  to  suggest 
here,  we  have  been  only  endeavoring  to  assist  him  to  be 
true  to  his  mission  and  his  conscience. 

The  Religious  Journalist. 

Si  quando  in  dubiis  nutdbant  pectora  rebus , 

Ipse  erat  interpres  ducens  mortalia  corda 
De  tenebris  ad  lumen ;  uti  solet  ignea  lampas, 

Longinqua  de  turre  micans,  adducere  noctu 
Turbine  jactatos  secura  ad  littora  nautas. 

“  Whene’er  men’s  souls  on  Doubt’s  black  waves  were  tossed, 

His  voice  amid  the  gloom  was  wont  to  cheer 
The  wavering  ; — like  a  liglit-house  near  the  coast 
Which  high  above  the  raging  surge  doth  rear 
Its  far-seen  beacon  to  benighted  sailors  dear.”* 

We  would  speak  of  the  Catholic  journalist  with  the  re¬ 
spect,  the  admiration,  the  deep  and  grateful  atfection  due 


*  Baptist  of  Mantua,  De  Sacris  Diebus  Augusti. 


RELIGIOUS  JOURNALISM. 


439 


to  him  for  the  life-long  services  done  to  ourselves,  due  still 
more  for  the  priceless  benefits  conferred  on  the  community 
at  large. 

Few  seem  to  suspect  how  delicate,  how  difficult,  how 
painful,  and  how  ill-requited  are  the  functions  of  the  Catho¬ 
lic  journalist.  Fewer  still,  perhaps,  know  how  much  of 
varied  learning,  of  abnegation,  of  deep  humiliation,  not  un- 
frequently,  and  of  heroic  perseverance  is  displayed  in  the 
lowly  editorial  rooms  of  so  many  Catholic  weeklies  that  we 
could  name.  There  are  men,  whom  we  know  and  love  well, 
who  show  in  the  disinterestedness,  the  single-mindedness, 
the  absorbing  devotion  to  their  ungrateful  task  very  much 
of  if  not  all  the  devotion  to  supernatural  duty  shown  by 
the  lonely  missionary  of  some  obscure  Rocky  Mountain 
tribe  of  Indians,  or  by  the  Jesuit  among  the  perennial 
plagues  of  French  Guiana. 

They  do  not  desire  or  need  our  praise  ;  but  it  is  for  us  an 
imperative  need  and  duty  to  send  this  heart- cry  of  ours  to 
these  noble  and  heroic  toilers  in  their  chosen  post  of  labor. 
Are  there  not  among  them  so  many  who  have,  at  the  sacri¬ 
fice  of  all  earthly  wealth  and  honor,  at  the  cost  as  well  of 
health  and  all  comfort  or  consolation, — toiled  on  uncheered, 
unappreciated,  unrewarded  by  gratitude  or  emolument, — 
year  after  year  for  almost  a  lifetime,  and  who,  looking 
back  through  the  dismal  prospect  of  these  long  years,  can 
say,  “We  have  labored  all  the  night  and  have  taken 
nothing”  ?  And  yet,  looking  up  to  the  Master  for  whom 
they  work  and  in  Whom  alone  they  trust,  they  are  ready 
to  begin  again  every  week,  every  day,  repeating  cheerfully 
to  Him  and  to  their  own  brave  heart :  “But  at  Thy  word  I 
will  let  down  the  net.”  * 

Such  men  can  appreciate,  and  more  than  appreciate,  the 
lofty  sentiment  conveyed  in  the  following  lines  of  the  blind 
poet : 

“  When  I  consider  how  my  life  is  spent 

Ere  half  my  days  in  this  dark  world  and  wide, 

And  that  one  talent  which  is  death  to  hide 
Lodg’d  with  me  usriess,  though  my  soul  more  bent 


*  St.  Luke,  v.  5. 


440 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


To  serve  therewith  my  Maker,  and  present 
My  true  account,  lest  He  returning  chide ; 

Does  God  exact  day-labor,  light  denied, 

I  fondly  ask  ?  but  patience  to  prevent 

That  murmur,  soon  replies  :  God  doth  not  need 
Either  man’s  work  or  His  own  gifts  ;  who  best 

Bear  His  mild  yoke,  they  serve  Him  best :  His  state 
Is  kingly  ;  thousands  at  His  bidding  speed. 

And  post  o’er  land  and  ocean  without  rest  ; 

They  also  serve  who  only  stand  and  wait.” 

But  we  must  hasten  by  our  own  united  efforts  the  coming 
of  God’s  good  time, — of  a  day  when  religious  journalism 
shall  no  longer  be  condemned  to  thrive  or  pine  away  in 
obscure  corners,  like  certain  illicit  or  unavowable  trades, 
or  to  be  thrust  far  away  from  the  sunlight  into  some  dark¬ 
some  angle  of  the  conservatory,  or  neglected  nook  of  the  gar¬ 
den,  like  some  plant  of  ill  name  or  some  flowering  shrub  of 
unpleasant  odor,  little  beauty,  and  very  questionable  utility. 

There  are  rumors  of  a  convention  of  Catholic  journalists. 
We  hope  that  the  rumor  may  be  true,  and  pray  that  the 
proposed  convention  be  held  before  the  autumn  of  1878 
pass  into  winter.  Nor  should  the  promoters  of  this  project 
be  in  the  least  concerned  at  the  unkind  or  unjust  things 
said  of  them  by  a  small  portion  of  the  religious  press,  or  by 
the  illiberal  innuendoes  and  silly  sneers  of  a  few  secular 
journals.  There  are  so  many  precious  advantages  to  be 
derived  from  a  cordial  union  among  Catholic  journalists, 
and  by  a  steady  cooperation  toward  the  same  grand  pur¬ 
poses,  that  hasty  blame  from  friends,  or  undeserved  impu¬ 
tations  from  outsiders  may  be  passed  by  without  a  word  or 
thought,  seeing  how  much  is  to  be  gained  by  coming  to  a 
definite  understanding  on  the  work  to  be  done  by  our  press 
and  on  the  means  to  secure  its  being  well  and  thoroughly 
done. 

Union  for  Domestic  Progress ,  not  for  Aggression. 

The  Catholic  Congresses  held  in  Europe  have  been  of  im¬ 
mense  benefit  to  journalism, — not  only  by  their  bringing 
about  perfect  unity  of  views  and  unanimity  of  action,  but 
by  elevating  journalists  in  their  own  estimation,  by  bring- 


UNION  OF  MINDS  AND  HEARTS. 


441 


ing  together  accomplished  and  distinguished  men  enlisted 
in  the  same  cause,  by  enabling  them  to  count  their  numbers 
and  estimate  their  own  power,  by  determining  the  centers 
where  Catholic  journalism  needs  to  be  supported,  and  by 
giving  such  support  liberally.  ...  We  have  here  no  politi¬ 
cal  parties  to  favor  or  to  oppose ;  we  have  no  crusade  to 
make  either  against  the  secular  press  or  against  other  reli¬ 
gious  denominations.  We  have  enough  to  do  to  second  by 
every  means  of  publicity,  by  the  united  labors  of  our  best 
literary  talent,  the  efforts  of  the  Hierarchy  and  clergy  to 
make  truth  shine  forth  in  its  own  native  splendor,  to  bring 
truth  in  action, — the  lives  of  the  great  and  the  good  in  every 
past  age, — home  to  every  family  and  individual  in  the  land. 
We  shall  have  glorious  labor  enough  to  do  to  make  the 
House  of  our  Great  Mother  known  to  those  of  the  house¬ 
hold  itself  in  all  its  length  and  breadth  and  height,  inside 
and  outside,  with  its  untold  and  incomparable  wealth  of 
holiness,  of  beauty,  of  loveliness.  The  Catholic  journalist 
will  ever  find  enough  to  do  in  helping  to  make  the  chil¬ 
dren  of  the  faith  worthy  in  every  way  of  their  birthright 
of  grace  and  greatness, — without  exciting  the  groundless 
alarms  or  provoking  the  hostility  of  any  portion  of  the  press 
or  the  public. 

To  the  noble  men  who  fulfill  this  blessed  mission  of  ex¬ 
pounding  and  spreading  the  truth, — we  have  only  one  more 
word  to  say  :  Let  them,  in  all  circumstances  and  under  the 
most  trying  provocation,  observe  the  rule  of  charity  and 
moderation  recommended,  almost  with  his  dying  breath,  by 
Pius  IX.  Therein  they  will  also  be  carrying  out  the  beau¬ 
tiful  sentiment  quoted  above  from  St.  Francis  of  Sales, 
whom  the  same  ever  dear  and  venerated  pontiff  gave  to 
journalists  as  their  special  patron.  It  is  well  for  all  of  us  to 
learn  and  to  ponder  how 

“The  highest  good 
Unlimited,  ineffable,  doth  so  speed 
To  love,  as  beam  to  lucid  body  dark, 

Giving  as  much  of  ardor  as  it  finds. 

The  sempiternal  effluence  streams  abroad, 

Spreading,  wherever  charity  extends.”  * 


V.  UX  J  K> 


Dante, 


G  Pn  -nnrn  tnrxT  ^  v XT 
-*•  W  >  — ■  • 


CHAPTER  XXII. 


THE  BUSINESS  MAN. 


If  you  will  cry  out  upon  idleness,  I  am  not  disposed  to  dispute  about  words. 
It  is  certain  that  labor  was  not  in  tlie  middle  ages  considered  the  end  and  sole 
business  of  life.  It  was  thought  that  man,  even  earthly  man,  liveth  not  by 
bread  alone,  and  that  he  requires  other  enjoyments  than  those  of  the  body. 
Labor  was  regarded  as  the  penalty  of  sin,  and,  as  such,  man  desired  to  endure 
as  little  of  it  as  possible.  But  things  are  now  greatly  changed,  and  do  not  say 
for  the  worse.  God,  who  in  the  chastisements  of  this  world  provides  for  the 
good  of  man,  permits  that  when  nations  lose  sight  of  Heaven,  avidity  should 
impel  them  to  “  hard  labor  ”  in  the  strict  judicial  sense  of  the  word,  to  which 
human  justice  forces  dangerous  criminals.  So  while  passions  are  unchained  in 
men’s  hearts,  seif-interest  forges  fetters  for  them,  and  leisure  decreases  in  pro¬ 
portion  to  the  increase  of  evil  desires.  This  is  the  case  with  nations  as  it  is 
with  individuals  ;  and  it  is  providential  as  well  as  severe.* 

In  the  modern  world, — at  least  where  there  is  nothing 
like  nobility  of  birth, — men  will  seek  to  rise,  in  proportion 
as  they  are  free  to  rise,  by  steady  application  to  business. 
Thus,  they  will  first  rise  to  wealth,  and  through  wealth  to 
social  distinction.  Even  in  democratic  communities  the 
learned  professions  lead  of  themselves  to  social  position  and 
to  political  power.  But  the  power  which  wealth  of  itself  be¬ 
stows  on  its  owner,  is  entirely  independent  of  political  party 
and  distinct  from  the  influence  attached  to  what  is  known 
as  social  position  or  respectability. 

Of  this  power,  or — as  we  shall  call  it — extensive  ability 
of  doing  good,  we  shall  speak  presently  when  treating  of 
the  manufacturer  and  the  merchant  prince.  For  the  mo¬ 
ment,  we  shall  speak  of  the  qualities  and  virtues  that  make 
the  man  of  business. 

*  Reverend  Father  Caliier,  Vitraux  prints  de  Saint  Etienne  de  Bourges,  im¬ 
perial  folio,  Paris,  1842-44. 


442 


THE  BUSINESS  MAN. 


443 


We  shall  say  little,  however,  of  mere  industry,  of  steady 
application  to  one’ s  pursuit,  and  of  that  indomitable  perse¬ 
verance  without  which  the  most  feverish  activity  would  be 
like  the  waters  of  Niagara,  a  mighty  power  wasted  in  noise 
and  display.  Besides,  in  our  introductory  chapter  we  have 
insisted  at  length  and  repeatedly  on  the  absolute  necessity 
of  having  a  definite  purpose  in  life,  of  setting  one’ s  heart 
wholly  on  carrying  out  that  purpose,  and  of  never  ceasing 
to  pursue  it  to  the  end. 

This  is  to  be,  in  your  own  chosen  sphere,  “the  active 
doer.”  But  you  have,  besides,  to  be  in  every  sphere,  no 
matter  how  high  or  how  lowly,  “  the  noble  liver;”  and  it 
is  this  nobility  of  life  in  the  business  man  of  every  class 
that  we  must  now  urge  upon  the  reader’s  consideration. 

The  first  requisite  toward  this  nobleness  is  to  make  sure 
that  you  work  for  Him  to  whom  belong  both  the  day  and 
the  night,  and  whom  all  things  are  bound  to  serve.  You, — 
whoever  you  are,  or  what  path  soever  you  follow  in  this 
rushing  world  of  activity, — are  by  baptism  the  son  of  the 
Great  King,  living  in  His  house,  subsisting  on  His  bread, 
aiming  in  all  things  to  please  that  most  loving  Parent  and 
most  magnificent  Master.  Whatever  your  occupation,  then, 
whatever  you  have  to  do  or  to  suffer,  seek  only  to  please 
Him.  This  constant  tending  in  all  our  aims,  sentiments, 
actions,  sufferings,  to  do  solely  the  most  righteous  will  of 
the  Most  High  God, — is  what  is  called  ua  right  or  pure  in¬ 
tention.”  Without  this  you  cannot  please  God  or  serve 
Him  or  have  any  claim  to  reward  from  Him. 

This  is  the  meaning  of  the  pregnant  passage  in  Christ’ s 
earliest  recorded  teaching:  “Where  thy  treasure  is,  there 
is  thy  heart  also.  The  light  [lamp]  of  thy  body  is  thy  eye. 
If  thy  eye  be  single,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  lightsome. 
But  if  thy  eye  be  evil,  thy  whole  body  shall  be  darksome.”* 
Make  God  and  His  eternal  possession  your  chief  treasure  : 
set  your  heart  upon  never  losing  that,  whatever  else  in  life 
you  may  lose  or  you  may  gain.  Look  ever  up  to  Him  in 


*  St.  Matthew,  vi.  21,  22. 


444 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


the  beginning  of  all  yonr  ways,  and  let  your  heart  go  with 
your  eye  :  thereby  His  will  shall  be  like  an  unquenchable 
lamp  shedding  its  light  upon  your  road  through  life, — or, 
if  you  prefer  to  view  this  fundamental  truth  otherwise,  the 
love  of  Him  within  your  heart  will  be  like  an  unfailing 
light  which  you  bear  ever  with  you,  making  every  path  you 
walk  in  lightsome, — full  of  jdeasantness,  and  peace,  full  of 
the  unalterable  joy  of  a  conscience  at  rest,  to  which  self- 
seeking,  deceit,  or  dishonesty,  are  things  unknown  and  im¬ 
possible. 

This  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  active  Christian 
piety, — the  very  first  letter  of  the  alphabet  of  practical 
holiness  so  familiar  to  our  forefathers,  so  universally  fami¬ 
liar  still  among  their  faithful  descendants.  The  following 
passage  of  the  great  St.  Bonaventure  expressed  this  per¬ 
petual  yearning  of  the  heart  of  the  Christian  man  for  God 
and  His  eternity : 

“  The  first  stage  of  our  journey  toward  eternity  is  the 
right  intention  of  eternal  things.  The  soul  of  man  through 
this  aspiration  toward  what  is  everlasting,  is  borne  upward, 
urged  onward,  and  given  strength  to  proceed  on  its  early 
journey.  It  aims,  first,  at  possessing  the  One  Eternal  Real¬ 
ity,  fixing  its  attention  upon  it,  reaching  forward  to  it,  per¬ 
sisting  in  its  quest  of  it,  making  of  it  the  chief  motive  of  its 
life, — because  that  one  eternal  thing  is  the  one  thing  neces¬ 
sary,  which  consummates  by  possession  all  the  soul’s  de¬ 
sires,  and  fixes  them  on  the  One  treasure,  which  shall  not 
be  taken  from  it  forever.  Our  reason  tells  us  that  we  must 
fix  our  aim  on  this,  before  directing  our  views  to  aught 
else  :  for  our  highest  and  most  honorable  achievements  must 
prove  unavailing,  when  the  eye  of  the  heart  is  turned  aside 
from  its  Eternal  Object.”  * 

Yes,  surely,  this  is  the  lamp  of  right  intention,  of  living 
active  faith  by  which  all  Christian  men  of  business  must 
direct  their  steps  every  day  they  rise.  And  one  cannot  but 
perceive,  on  the  simple  enunciation  of  this  most  rational 


*  Sanctus  Bonaventura,  De  Septem  Itineribus. 


THE  BUSINESS  MAN. 


445 


and  most  beautiful  doctrine, — that  fidelity  to  this  practice 
of  purity  of  intention  must  make  life  a  success,  while  the 
forgetfulness  of  God  and  eternity  leads  to  utter  failure, 
ruin,  and  despair. 

In  looking  at  the  many  and  most  melancholy  wrecks  that 
daily  strew  the  shores  of  the  great  stream  of  active  life, — 
how  many  a  man  can  say,  as  he  sits  and  meditates  over  the 
causes  of  his  own  ruin, — just  what  the  poet  says  of  his  own 
misapplied  gifts  and  wasted  life  ? 

“  I  have  been  cunning  in  mine  overthrow, 

The  careful  pilot  of  my  proper  woe. 

Mine  were  my  faults,  and  mine  be  their  reward. 

My  whole  life  was  a  contest,  since  the  day 
That  gave  me  being,  gave  me  that  which  marred 
The  gift, — a  fate  or  will  that  walked  astray. 

Had  I  but  sooner  learnt  the  crowd  to  shun, 

I  had  been  better  than  I  now  can  be  ; 

The  passions  which  have  torn  me  would  have  slept ; 

/had  not  suffered,  and  thou  hadst  not  wept. 

With  false  Ambition  what  had  I  to  do  ? 

Little  with  Love,  and  least  of  all  with  Fame. 

.  .  .  This  was  not  the  end  I  did  pursue  ; 

Surely,  I  once  beheld  a  nobler  aim. 

But  all  is  over — I  am  one  the  more 

To  baffled  millions  which  have  gone  before.”  * 

The  mere  human  sentiments, — without  a  thought  of  God 
or  of  one’s  accountability  to  Him, — which  are  expressed  in 
this  long  wail  of  Vanity  foiled  and  finding  itself  face  to  face 
with  Self,  ruined  and  dishonored,  are  pitiful  enough,  and  all 
the  more  so  that  the  suffering  spirit  had  never  sought  God, 
and  in  its  agony,  has  no  thought  of  seeking  Him. 

Let  us  learn  wisdom  betimes,  and  trim  the  lamp  of  con¬ 
science  by  the  ]ight  of  these  lurid  fires  of  Despair.  We 
have  uttered  the  word  “  Conscience  :  ”  it  is  or  should  be  for 
the  busy  man  of  the  world, — the  merchant,  the  banker,  the 
broker,  the  manufacturer, — what  a  mighty  spell-word  was 
ever  conceived  to  be  among  the  Eastern  nations,  all  power¬ 
ful  to  guard  from  ill,  to  release  from  difficulty  and  danger, 


*  Byron,  “  Epistle  to  bis  Sister  Augusta.” 


446 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


and  to  obtain  in  need  the  most  precious  boons  from  a  super¬ 
natural  power. 

The  reality  of  conscience  is  more  than  all  that  for  you, 
if  you  can  only  apprehend  its  meaning  aright,  and  be 
guided  by  its  teachings. 

Conscience  is  God’s  own  light  and  voice  in  our  inmost 
soul  telling  us,  at  every  step  of  our  journey  through  life, — 
and  telling  us,  with  unmistakable  clearness  and  unerring 
certainty, — that  we  must  be  true  to  the  Light  within  us  and 
walk  according  to  its  guidance  ;  true  to  our  own  soul’ s  con¬ 
victions,  spiritual  aspirations,  and  tendencies ;  true  to  our 
fellow-men,  whoever  or  whatever  they  may  be, — true  to 
them  in  our  words  and  actions,  as  if  God  were  immediately 
to  judge  us  after  each  action  and  each  word  ;  true  to  God 
Himself, — honoring  Him,  our  acknowledged  Master  and 
Parent,  by  never  allowing  stain  or  suspicion  of  stain  to  fall 
on  our  personal  honor,  on  our  truthfulness,  our  honesty, 
our  integrity,  our  faithfulness  to  given  word  or  plighted 
promise  ; — so  true  to  God  and  to  ourselves  as  His  sons,  that 
to  us  falsehood,  deception,  betrayal  of  trust,  dishonest  deed 
or  thought  or  aim,  must  be  an  utter  impossibility. 

Have  they  not  banished  conscience,  in  our  days,  from 
many  walks  of  the  business  world  ?  Have  they  not  quenched 
the  divine  lamp  in  the  soul’s  sanctuary,  and  derided  (for 
they  cannot  silence)  the  incorruptible  voice  within  them  ? 
And  with  conscience  have  not  trustfulness,  and  good  faith, 
and  security,  and  uprightness,  and  immaculate  honor  dis¬ 
appeared  from  all  the  great  marts  and  centers  of  commer¬ 
cial  life  % 

Will  you  help  to  bring  back  the  Divine  Presence,  the 
ever-burning  Light,  and  the  Voice  that  cannot  be  bought 
or  silenced, — to  the  counting-house,  the  exchange,  the  fac¬ 
tory  ?  Let  the  writer  point  out  the  way,  as  he  has  learned 
it,  not  only  from  the  experiences  of  modern  times,  but  from 
the  teachings  of  by-gone  generations.  He  will  hold  up  the 
mirror,  and  you  will  find  those  whom  to  copy  and  to  follow. 

You  will  hear  around  you  daily  voices  saying  :  “Catho¬ 
licism  is  pernicious  ;  it  is  best  not  to  meddle  with  it.  It 


THE  BUSINESS  MAN 


447 


makes  a  man  a  coward ;  lie  cannot  sin  but  it  accusetli  liim  ; 
he  cannot  swear  but  it  checks  him  ;  he  cannot  sophisticate 
but  it  detects  him.  ’Tis  a  soirit  that  mutinies  in  a  man’s 

-A. 

bosom  ;  it  tills  one  full  of  obstacles  ;  it  is  turned  out  of 
towns  and  cities  for  a  dangerous  thing  ;  and  every  man  that 
means  to  live  as  he  pleaseth,  endeavors  to  trust  to  himself 
and  live  without  it  3  They  are  right.  The  confessional,  the 
advice,  or  even  implied  judgment  of  holy  persons,  who  with 
the  tirmness  of  their  souls  by  reasons  guide  us,  may,  and 
will,  form  a  hinderance  to  many  undertakings.  The  Mar¬ 
quis  of  Tabara,  being  engaged  in  an  arduous  affair,  applied 
to  Marina  de  Escobar,  begging  her  to  commend  it  to  God. 
He  seemed  already  on  the  point  of  succeeding  in  it,  when 
the  venerable  Marina  told  him  •  that  it  was  not  expedient, 
and  sent  Father  Luis  de  Ponte  to  announce  to  him  the  re¬ 
sult  of  her  prayers.  Though  it  required  a  hard  sacrifice,  the 
Marquis  received  her  counsel  as  from  God,  and  relinquished 
the  pursuit  of  his  project.  He  acted  like  the  pilot  in  a 
storm,  who  being  directed  by  the  young  St.  Catherine  of 
Sienna  to  turn  his  vessel  to  the  wind,  obeyed  her,  and  in 
consequence  came  to  the  desired  port  in  safety. 

“  Catholicity  beholds  in  many  things  familiar  on  the  road 
of  human  industry,  the  tree  of  prohibition,  and  forbids  the 
sweetness,  though  it  promise  that  knowledge  which  made 
Eve  address  the  apple  in  the  words, 

- ‘  Experience,  next,  to  thee  I  owe. 

Best  guide  ;  not  following  thee,  I  had  remained 
In  ignorance.’  ”  * 

Modern  industry,  modern  business,  like  Eve,  when  the 
forbidden  fruit  has  been  plucked  and  tasted,  finds  that  the 
sweet  savor  lasts  but  a  moment,  leaving  behind  the  bitter¬ 
ness  of  death.  Even  before  the  poison  has  wrought  its 
worst  on  heart  and  brain,  the  sinner  discovers  that  con¬ 
science,  not  gain  is  the  “best  guide,”  and  would  give 
worlds  to  recall  his  past  “ignorance,”  and  forget  the  XDangs 
and  terrors  of  the  guilty  knowledge  he  has  acquired. 


*Digby,  “Compitum,”  iii.,  ch.  v. 


448 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


As  we  pen  these  lines,  in  the  last  days  of  August,*  the 
great  daily  papers  are  filled  with  lists  of  men,  “-business 
men  ”  all  of  them,  who  rush  to  the  courts  to  profit  by  the 
expiring  bankrupt  law,  and  no  one  offers  the  pretense  that 
these  same  bankrupts  are  acting  in  good  faith :  No,  the 
whole  public  of  this  great  commercial  metroplis  acknowl¬ 
edges  without  a  pang  of  remorse  or  a  blush  of  shame, — that 
the  expiring  law  favored  fraud  and  dishonesty,  and  that 
these  rushing  crowds  who  throng  all  the  avenues  of  the 
courts  of  law,  are  acting  fraudulently,  dishonorably, — rob¬ 
bing  their  creditors  and  perjuring  themselves  in  the  very 
oath  they  dare  to  take  ! 

Are  matters  carried  on  more  honestly,  more  conscien¬ 
tiously  on  the  Stock  Exchange,  in  our  numerous  Savings 
Banks,  by  our  great  railroad  corporations  in  city  and  coun¬ 
try,  by  the  great  merchants  who  are  not  ashamed  to  de¬ 
fraud  the  revenue  whenever  they  can  purchase  impunity, 
by  our  manufacturers  who  set  aside  all  the  laws  of  natu¬ 
ral  equity  and — too  often,  alas, — of  humanity  itself  in  their 
dealings  with  the  laboring  millions  ?  And  shall  we  go  out, 
like  our  scientific  exploring  expeditions,  with  sounding- 
rod  and  drag-net,  and  measure  these  depths  of  iniquity 
and  shame  one  after  the  other  %  or  shall  we  draw  up  to  the 
light  of  day  from  the  slime  of  their  native  beds  the  dark 
mysteries,  and  the  dishonored  names  that  it  were  better  to 
leave  buried  there  forever  \ 

“It  may  be  indeed  an  unworthy  consideration,”  says 
Digby,  “but  the  fact  is,  that  the  mere  desire  of  promoting 
their  own  success  in  their  respective  employments  can  direct 
practical  men  to  desire  an  extension  of  the  influence  of  the 
Catholic  faith,  which  affords  the  best  securities  against  the 
calamities,  disgrace,  and  ruin  to  which  they  are  exposed  by 
the  dishonesty  of  others,  of  their  rivals,  of  their  assistants, 
and  perhaps  even  of  their  own  children.  For  the  effects  of 
such  instruction ,  if  unimpeded ,  would  be  a  deep  sense  of 
responsibility ,  and  a  delicacy  of  conscience  on  the  least  as 
well  as  on  the  greatest  occasions  !  ” 


*  1873. 


r 


THE  BUSINESS  MAN. 


449 


We  might  take  the  most  Catholic  of  the  great  continental 
nations  at  the  very  period  when  Western  Christendom  was 
not  broken  asunder,  and  Spain  was  at  the  very  height  of 
her  industrial  and  military  greatness, — and  show  what  un¬ 
bending  integrity  and  inviolable  honor  presided  over  every 
industrial  enterprise  and  commercial  transaction.  Take 
this  “  photograph  ’  ’  of  one  city  of  Northern  Spain, — as  a 
sample  of  every  other  city  throughout  the  Peninsula  and 
including  the  then  glorious  and  thrifty  Portugal, — and 
judge  of  the  tree  of  Catholic  conscience  by  its  fruits. 

4  ‘  At  Burgos  the  inhabitants  are  not  idle  or  stray ers 
abroad ;  but  all,  not  only  men  but  women,  seek  to  gain 
their  bread  by  the  labor  of  their  hands,  exercising  virtu¬ 
ously  all  kinds  of  liberal  and  mechanical  arts.  The  mer¬ 
chants  who  enrich  the  city  are  full  of  faith  and  liberality. 
The  priests  are  most  studious  of  the  divine  worship  and 
diligent  in  application  to  learning  as  well  as  to  their  sacred 
offices.  The  magistrates  regard  the  public  welfare  with 
prudence  and  integrity.  In  fine,  men  of  all  orders  and  pro¬ 
fessions  are  exact  in  the  performance  of  their  respective 
duties  ;  so  that  the  city  daily  increases  in  prosperity  and 
fame.”  * 

You  have,  we  presume,  traveled  in  Italy,  as  well  as 
through  the  countries  of  Northern  Europe.  You  are  there¬ 
fore  not  unacquainted  with  the  style  in  which  Christian 
Europe,  before  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  deco¬ 
rated  the  places  of  public  business, — the  Town  Hall,  the  Ex¬ 
change  or  Merchants’  Hall,  and  the  Guild  Hall.  Passing 
over  the  magnificent  municipal  and  civic  edifices  of  the  Low 
Countries,  France,  Germany,  and  Northern  Italy, — we  shall 
mention  one  easily  accessible  to  the  religious  pilgrim  or  the 
plea  sure- seeker  on  his  way  through  Etruria  to  Rome.  Stop 
at  Perugia  for  a  day, — and  visit  the  Exchange  ( Sala  del 
Cambio ),  to  admire  the  immortal  creations  of  Perugino,  the 
beautiful  city’s  noblest  son.  The  whole  place  is  filled  with 
divine  and  graceful  forms  in  keeping  with  the  lovely  coun- 


*  Marinaei  Siculi,  De  Bebus  Uispanicis,  lib.  iii. 
29 


450 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


try  and  with  the  pious  spirit  of  its  people.  One  feels  even 
now  on  entering  the  place, — desecrated  though  everything 
has  been  by  a  spirit  far  from  Christian, — as  if  one  entered 
a  sanctuary  of  religion,  instead  of  the  hall  where  Perugia’s 
men  of  business  met  in  times  when  conscience  reigned 
supreme,  and  honor  was  the  soul  of  commercial  activity. 
Indeed,  the  contemporaries  of  Pietro  Perugino  did  want  to 
make  of  their  Exchange  a  sort  of  sanctuary  blessed  by 
religion,  where  every  glorious  figure  on  walls  and  ceiling 
should  recall  to  them  their  accountability  to  the  God  who 
is  infinitely  just  and  infinitely  faithful  and  true. 

The  painting  of  this  superb  monument  of  commercial 
honor  was  done  at  the  expense  of  the  Guild  of  Woollen 
Drapers.  Are  we  suggesting?  No,  indeed.  Nor  are  we 
preaching.  We  deposit  a  few  germs  of  deep  and  salutary 
thoughts  in  generous  hearts,  and  pass  on. 

We  exhorted  the  business  man,  at  the  beginning  of  each 
day, — to  trim  his  lamp  at  God’s  own  altar  ;  and  then  to  be 
guided  by  conscience  during  the  varied  labors  that  awaited 
him. 

What  is  more  important  still,  is  that  you  should  in  the 
steady  and  truthful  light  of  your  conscience,  examine  the 
transactions  of  the  last  twenty -four  hours. 

Examine,  O  merchant,  how  you  have  dealt  with  your  as¬ 
sociates,  with  your  debtors  and  with  your  creditors.  God 
has  prospered  you,  and  increased  your  substance  tenfold 
and  a  hundredfold.  All  the  fruits  of  industry  have  in¬ 
creased  and  multiplied  in  your  hands.  Have  you  grown 
more  conscientious, — more  scrupulous  about  truth,  about 
your  plighted  faith,  about  even  the  minutest  detail  of  your 
business,  according  as  you  grew  in  wealth  ?  Has  prosper¬ 
ity  bound  your  heart  more  lovingly,  gratefully,  firmly  to 
Him  from  whom  every  blessing  comes  down  on  men  and 
the  work  of  their  hands  ? 

But, — above  all, — how  do  you  treat  your  dependants  ? 
They  are  many, — a  host  in  themselves,  perhaps.  Do  you 
treat  them,  every  one  of  them,  justly , — as  man  is  strictly 
bound  to  treat  the  veriest  savage,  who  labors  for  him  or  who 


TEE  BUSINESS  MAN. 


451 


exchanges  his  furs  or  his  simple  wares  for  their  lawful  and 
fair  equivalent  in  money  ?  Do  you  treat  them  generously , — • 
as  brother  should  treat  brother  for  whose  life-blood  and 
soul  he  is  to  account  to  their  common  Father  and  Judge  % 
Or  do  you  exact  from  those  beneath  you  the  very  utmost 
their  strength  at  its  greatest  pitch  of  exertion  can  produce 
for  a  stipend  that  barely  suffices  to  keep  body  and  soul  to¬ 
gether  1  And  if  so,  how  do  you  expect  to  fare  at  that  dread 
Judgment  Seat,  whither  not  one  minutest  fraction  of  your 
wealth  will  follow  you,  but  where  a  kind  word  to  the  sink¬ 
ing  heart  of  your  poor  toilers,  or  a  merciful  alleviation  of 
their  intolerable  load  of  labor,  or  a  timely  addition  to  the 
pittance  of  the  over-worked  mother,  or  daughter,  or  sister, 
or  of  the  father  borne  down  by  the  care  of  the  dear  ones  he 
can  neither  feed,  nor  clothe,  nor  warm — would  plead  for 
your  soul  more  powerfully  than  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
you  have  squandered  in  ostentatious  charity, — the  very 
worst  form  of  heartless  vanity  ? 

Charity  ?  Ah,  we  go  often  far  away  from  our  own  door 
to  seek  objects  of  so-called  charity, — while  those  who  look 
up  to  us  for  the  bread  of  to-day  or  for  the  brotherly  sym¬ 
pathy  often  more  needful  than  bread  to  the  famished  heart, 
— are  allowed  to  go  the  whole  night  and  day,  and  weary 
week  after  week,  unpitied,  uncared  for,  unthought  of  ! 

Look  well  into  your  conscience,  O  brother !  God  has 
given  you  much  :  from  our  heart  we  pray  Him  to  give  you 
still  more.  But  bethink  you,  while  it  is  yet  time,  that  your 
responsibility  is  in  precise  proportion  to  the  unbounded  lib¬ 
erality  of  Providence  in  your  regard. 

To  manufacturers  of  every  class, — these  great  princes  of 
our  industry, — of  whom  their  country  is  so  justly  proud,— 
what  shall  we  say,  in  addition  to  this  adjuration  ?  Shall 
we  add  our  voice  to  the  many  warring  voices  that  now 
resound  throughout  both  hemispheres  stirring  up  Labor 
against  Capital,  or  steeling  capitalists  to  the  sad  needs  of 
those  dependent  on  them  ?  God  forbid  !  The  ministry  of 
the  priest  to-day  must  be  what  it  has  always  been,  one-of 
mediation  and  conciliation  between  brothers  at  variance, — - 


452 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  TEEM. 


trusting  himself  to  both  in  his  efforts  at  pacification,  and 
trusted  by  both,  as  true  love  and  true  charity  ever  is. 

We  see,  however,  the  mighty  tide  of  popular  discontent 
rising  higher  day  by  day,  and  lashed  into  greater  fury  by 
the  breath  of  passions  that  are  not  of  Heaven,  and  of  an  elo¬ 
quence  that  is  not  fired  by  true  love  of  the  brotherhood. 

We  all  remember  how  a  great  English  chancellor,  nearly 
half  a  century  ago,  pleaded  the  cause  of  timely  reform  be¬ 
fore  the  House  of  Peers.  In  his  prophetic  dread  of  the  evils 
which  were  sure  to  arise  from  acknowledged  wrongs,  left  so 
long  unremedied,  and  from  inveterate  abuses  crying  out  for 
reform,  he  cast  himself  on  his  knees  before  the  lordly  as¬ 
sembly  and  besought  them  with  tears  to  have  pity  on  their 
country,  and  to  spare  their  order  and  themselves  the  fearful 
consequences  of  popular  revenge.  He  was  heard,  and  the 
reforms  were  granted. 

We  could  kneel  to  you,  O  you  on  whose  generosity  and 
intelligence  depends  so  much  of  the  welfare  of  your  coun¬ 
try,  and  beseech  you  with  a  voice  that  would  borrow  its 
tones  from  no  venal  interest  or  unworthy  passion, — to  con¬ 
sider  how  much  you  can  do  to  better  the  condition  of  mil¬ 
lions  of  working  men  and  women  within  the  land. 

But  were  it  given  us  to  be  in  spirit  or  in  the  body  by  your 
side,  when,  at  the  end  of  your  day’s  manifold  cares,  and 
before  you  commit  yourself  to  that  sleep  which  is  the  image 
of  the  eternal  repose, — we  should  lovingly  whisper  in  your 
ear  to  open  the  book  of  your  conscience  there,  beneath  the 
eye  of  the  all-seeing  God,  and  to  examine  yourselves  as  to 
how  you  stand, — in  strict  justice,  in  brotherly  charity,  in 
the  claims  of  common  humanity, — toward  each  one  of  the 
families  who  toil  for  you,  who  labor  to  build  up  your  for¬ 
tune  and  your  fame. 

You  stand  for  them  in  the  place  of  God, — representing 
His  fatherly  care,  His  tenderness,  His  justice,  His  generos¬ 
ity, — the  wise  love  that  cares  for  the  souls  and  bodies,  for 
the  health,  the  hearts,  the  homes  of  the  many  who  look  up 
to  you  to  make  life  bearable,  health  robust  and  flourishing, 
hearts  grateful  and  happy,  homes  bright  and  blessed  by  all 


THE  BUSINESS  MAN. 


453 


the  sanctities  of  Christian  and  family  life.  Is  this  your 
care  ?  Assuredly,  it  is  your  interest ;  most  assuredly  it  is 
your  duty  ;  and  your  duty  is  to  your  God  ! 

Head  the  following  anecdote  carefully,  and  we  then  leave 
you  to  the  inspiration  of  that  Mercy  who  is  the  great  Healer 
of  all  our  wounds  in  this  life,  and  the  advocate  in  the  great 
Judgment  of  all  who  have  been  merciful. 

44  Gregorius  Tilianus,  a  most  learned  youth,  being  found  in 
sickness  lying  on  a  poor  bed,  which  he  had  chosen  expressly 
for  its  wretchedness,  the  visitor  said,  4  I  am  ashamed  to 
see  you  lying  like  a  needy  beggar.’  4  Say,  rather,  like  a 
king  or  emperor,’  he  replied  cheerfully.  4  Do  they  not  in 
time  of  war  lie  as  roughly  %  ’ 

4  4  In  his  last  hour  he  ordered  the  poor  to  be  convoked 
and  admitted.  These  were  already  in  the  vestibule,  and 
so  eager  to  enter,  it  was  difficult  to  keep  them  back.  4  Let 
them  enter,’  he  says,  4  and  not  suffer  Christ  to  wait  before 
the  door  ;  and  distribute  my  alms  to  them  in  my  pres¬ 
ence,  and  say  to  each  not  to  return  thanks,  as  it  is  in  pay¬ 
ment  of  what  I  owe  to  them,  and  not  a  gift.  Then  dismiss 
them,  and  invite  them  to  return  to  supper.’ 

4  4  It  was  a  touching  sight  to  observe  the  grief  of  the  poor 
as  they  pressed  in  to  their  friend.  The  blind,  the  lame, 
orphans,  widows,  the  aged,  epileptics,  and  lepers,  and  those 
suffering  from  all  sorts  of  maladies  and  calamities, — all 
wept  but  Gregory,  who  had  a  smiling  countenance  as  he 
spoke  to  console  them,  adding,  4  Not  alone  to  the  poor  does 
God  show  mercy,  but  also  to  those  who  do  good  to  the 
poor  ? ’ 

44  In  disposing  of  his  property  he  ordered  that  even  his 
books  should  be  sold  and  the  price  given  to  the  poor. 
‘Sell  it,’  he  says,  ‘either  in  wdiole  or  in  parts,  and  spare 
not  the  nobility  of  books.  For  there  is  nothing  on  earth 
so  noble  and  precious  that  it  ought  not  to  be  employed  to 
the  glory  of  Christ.  ...  I  wish  we  had  the  gold  of  Arabia, 
that  we  might  distribute  it  with  the  books  !  ”  * 


*  De  Iiichebourcq,  Ultima  Verba  Factaque. 


4 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 


THE  LABORING  MAN. 

It  is  a  common  sentence  that  knowledge  is  power  ;  but  who  hath  duly  con¬ 
sidered  or  set  forth  the  power  of  ignorance?  Knowledge  slowly  builds  up 
what  ignorance  in  an  hour  pulls  down.  Knowledge,  through  patient  and  frugal 
centuries,  enlarges  discovery  and  makes  record  of  it ;  ignorance,  wanting  its 
day’s  dinner,  lights  a  lire  with  the  record,  and  gives  a  flavor  to  its  one  roast 
with  the  burned  souls  of  many  generations.  Knowledge,  instructing  the  sense, 
refining  and  multiplying  needs,  transforms  itself  into  skill,  and  makes  life 
various  with  a  new  Six  Days’  Work  ;  comes  ignorance  drunk,  on  the  seventh, 
with  a  firkin  of  oil  and  a  match  and  an  easy  “Let  there  be,” — and  the  many- 
colored  creation  is  shriveled  up  in  blackness.  Of  a  truth,  knowledge  is  power, 
but  it  is  a  power  reined  by  scruple,  having  a  conscience  of  what  must  be  and 
may  be ;  whereas  ignorance  is  a  blind  giant  who,  let  him  but  wax  unbound, 
would  make  it  a  sport  to  seize  the  pillars  that  hold  up  the  long-wrought  fabric 
of  human  good,  and  turn  all  the  places  of  joy  dark  as  a  buried  Babylon. 

If  we  have  reserved  the  laborer  for  our  last  chapter  and 
the  crown  of  our  work,  it  is  not  that  we  love  him  less  or 
hold  him  of  less  account  than  the  professional  man  or  the 
man  of  letters.  On  the  contrary,  in  every  one  of  the  pre¬ 
ceding  chapters,  the  great  virtues  inculcated  had  for  one  of 
their  chief  purposes  to  bring  the  rich,  the  learned,  the  pow¬ 
erful,  and  the  influential  into  more  brotherly  sympathy 
with  the  working-man. 

We  are  poor  ourselves,  and  of  the  poor  ;  our  life  has 
been  spent  in  laboring  among  them,  and  we  consider  that 
the  sweetest  reward  of  our  present  toil  shall  be  in  having 
our  books  find  their  way  to  the  home  of  the  laboring  man 
in  city  and  country. 

It  is  no  new  gospel  that  a  priestly  hand  could  hold  out 
to  the  sons  of  toil  the  whole  world  over.  We  cannot 

454 


TIIE  LABORING  MAN. 


455 


promise  to  make  this  earth  a  fool’s  paradise  where  dream¬ 
ers,  idlers,  and  schemers  might  dawdle  away,  in  all  the 
ignoble  vices  that  idleness  and  knavery  beget,  the  go]  den 
years  given  us  to  merit  eternity.  Nor  may  we  hold  out  to 
those  who  are  not  the  heirs  of  great  wealth  or  high  rank 
any  other  Heaven  hereafter  than  that  purchased  and  prom¬ 
ised  by  the  Redeemer  of  mankind. 

Redeemer  !  Saviour  !  God  of  our  souls  !  Comforter  of 
our  homes, — the  Friend  and  treasure  of  the  poor, — a  laborer 
Himself,  while  living  among  us,  to  sanctify  and  sweeten 
labor;  we  know  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  is  all  our  own, — 
all,  even  with  the  glory  and  bliss  of  His  eternal  kingdom  ! 
What  other  gospe],  then,  do  we,  can  we  desire,  than  that 
which  the  sweet  and  patient  Son  of  Mary,  the  pupil  and 
adopted  child  of  Joseph  the  Carpenter,  presents  to  us  ? 

“Come  to  Me,  all  you  that  labor,  and  are  burdened,  and 
I  will  refresh  you.  Take  up  My  yoke  upon  you,  and  learn 
of  Me,  because  I  am  meek,  and  humble  of  heart :  and  you 
shall  find  rest  for  your  souls.”  * 

Yes, — He  presents  Himself  to  you,  O  toilers  of  the  field, 
the  factory,  and  the  city, — you  whose  sweat  and  whose 
tears  fall  upon  the  hard  earth  or  into  the  salt  sea  ;  He  comes 
to  you,  in  His  boyhood  and  early  manhood,  with  His  hands 
hardened  from  the  carpenter’ s  toil, — long  before  He  stretched 
them  forth  on  the  bitter  wood  of  the  cross  to  be  pierced  and 
torn  with  the  nails ;  He  comes  to  you,  as  that  Jesus  the 
Good  Shepherd  whose  feet  wearied  not  in  traveling  again 
and  again  and  again  from  one  end  of  His  native  land  to  the 
other  in  quest  of  the  suffering  poor  or  the  over-burdened 
workmen,  to  cheer  them  at  their  toil,  to  lighten  their  mis¬ 
ery  ;  and  how  often,  in  His  own  sweet  seasons  of  visitation 
and  needful  comfort,  has  not  that  same  Good  Shepherd 
knocked  at  your  door,  His  head  wet  with  the  dews  of  the 
night,  and  His  blessed  feet  torn  and  bleeding  from  the  road  ? 

O  brothers, — it  is  in  the  vesture  of  His  love  that  we 
all  wish  Him  to  come  to  us, — with  “ the  purple  garment” 


*  St.  Matthew,  xi.  28,  29. 


456 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


showing  through  its  rents  where  whip  and  scourge  have 
ploughed  the  flesh,  His  head  encircled  with  piercing  thorns, 
His  meek  face  bruised  with  buffets  and  soiled  with  dust  and 
spittle,  and  tears  and  blood,  the  strong  hands  grasping  and 
the  mangled  shoulders  bearing  the  Cross,  and  the  deep  eyes 
looking  into  the  soul  of  every  one  of  us  to  say:  “I  am 
the  Good  Shepherd.”  “  Behold  I  have  graven  thee  in  My 
hands  ;  ”  *  “  Yea,  I  have  loved  thee  with  an  everlasting  love, 
therefore  have  I  drawn  thee  [to  Myself],  taking  pity  on 
thee  ;  “It  is  I,  fear  ye  not !  ”  J  “ I,  I  Myself  will  com¬ 
fort  you !”  §  Ah,  dear  above  all  that  earth  and  sky  con¬ 
tain  that  is  most  dear,  is  to  the  manly,  grateful  heart  of  the 
laborer,  the  poor,  the  suffering,  this  God  of  our  hearts,  this 
God  of  our  fathers  coming  to  us  in  our  daily  need  clad  in 
the  livery  of  His  love,  bearing  on  hands  and  feet,  on  head 
and  heart  the  glorious  wounds  inflicted  for  our  sake  ! 

And  what  does  he  preach  ?  Patience,  purity  of  heart, 
contempt  of  earthly  riches,  a  noble  ardor,  an  insatiable  hun¬ 
ger  and  thirst  for  all  Godlike  virtue ;  fortitude  under  suf¬ 
fering  and  trial ;  unwearied  and  unfaltering  trust  in  His 
own  ever-present  aid  ;  an  ambition  to  be  so  like  Himself  in 
thought  and  word  and  deed  that  all  men  may  see  in  you  the 
living  image  of  Jesus  mighty  in  loving, — that  is,  in  laboring, 
suffering,  and  accomplishing  great  things  for  His  love ;  a 
heart  too  great  for  this  world  and  all  the  things  of  time,  and 
to  be  filled  only  by  the  Infinite  God  and  the  Charity  of  His 
everlasting  kingdom. 

But  this  is  too  high  a  flight.  Let  us  see,  more  calmly, 
and  with  the  sights  and  sounds  of  our  daily  toil  around  us, 

• — what  He,  our  model,  wishes  every  laboring  man  to  be. 

Would  you  contemplate  for  a  moment  the  army  of  work¬ 
men  who  have  practiced  the  most  heroic  virtues  in  follow¬ 
ing  Christ,  and  whom  the  Church  lias  placed  among  her 
canonized  saints  ?  The  Apostles  were  fishermen  by  occupa¬ 
tion, — and  St.  Paul,  the  most  eloquent  of  them  all,  was  by 


*  Isaias,  xlix.  16. 

\  St.  Matthew,  xiv.  27. 


f  Jeremias,  xxxi.  3. 
§  Isaias,  li.  12. 


THE  LABORING  MAN. 


457 


trade  a  tentmaker,  and  like  liis  brothers  in  the  Apostleship, 
earned  his  own  bread  while  laboring  to  spread  the  faith  of 
Christ.  The  men  and  women  who  were  first  drawn  to  Him 
by  the  preaching  and  the  lowly  laborious  lives  of  these 
Apostles  were  from  the  laboring  classes, — becoming,  in  their 
turn,  the  ardent  propagators  of  the  Gospel  specially  des¬ 
tined  for  the  lowly  and  the  poor.  Thus  Onesimus, — the 
fugitive  slave,  whom  St.  Paul  converted  while  imprisoned  at 
Rome,  became  to  the  captive  Apostle,  an  energetic  helper. 
As  Christianity  spread,  and  with  its  extension  persecution 
waxed  fiercer,  the  laboring  classes  everywhere  furnished 
their  glorious  contingent  to  the  host  of  confessors  and  mar¬ 
tyrs.  In  every  city  of  the  Roman  Empire,  the  common 
laborer,  the  tradesman,  the  liberated  slaves  of  both  sexes 
stood  forth  before  the  tribunals  beside  their  masters  to  con¬ 
fess  Jesus  Christ,  and  died  with  them  in  the  most  fearful 
tortures  to  confirm  this  courageous  testimony.  What  need 
of  these  details  % 

We  have  at  this  moment, — among  many  other  venerable 
names  which  we  omit, — St.  Patrick,  a  slave  and  shepherd, 
as  the  apostle  and  patron  of  Ireland,  St.  Isidore,  a  farmer, 
as  one  of  the  chief  protectors  of  Spain ;  St.  Genevieve,  a 
poor  shepherdess,  the  honored  protectress  of  Paris  ;  and 
among  the  most  recently  canonized  French  saints,  Germaine 
Cousin,  another  poor  shepherd-girl,  and  Benedict  Labre,  a 
man  who  devoted  himself  to  even  worse  poverty  and  hard¬ 
ship.  Then,  as  we  glance  over  Christian  Europe,  we  meet 
here  and  there  with  SS.  Crispin  and  Crispinian,  martyrs, 
the  patrons  of  shoemakers,  and  shoemakers  themselves  ; 
St.  Theodotus,  an  innkeeper,  and  also  a  martyr  ;  St.  Homo¬ 
bonus,  St.  Maximus,  and  St.  Justus,  tradesmen  and  shop¬ 
keepers  ;  St.  Phocas  and  St.  Serenus,  gardeners  ;  St.  Gal- 
mier,  a  locksmith  ;  St.  Margaret  of  Louvain,  a  servant-maid 
in  a  tavern,  under  a  master  and  mistress  who  died  victims 
to  their  charity,  and  in  the  hour  when  they  had  given  up 
all  things  to  follow  Christ.  The  Blessed  Peter  of  Sienna 
was  a  combmaker ;  St.  Zita  of  Lucca,  a  servant-maid ;  St. 
Justa  and  St.  Rufina,  of  Seville,  were  workers  in  earthen- 


458 


TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 


ware,  which  they  sold  themselves.  St.  Fazio  of  Verona  was 
a  silversmith ;  St.  Thibaud  was  an  apprentice  shoemaker. 
And  have  we  not  among  the  recently  beatified  of  the  Soci¬ 
ety  of  Jesns  Alfonso  Rodriguez,  a  lay-brother  and  a  porter, 
— a  man  so  divinely  wise  that  he  was  the  spiritual  guide  of 
Peter  Claver,  the  apostle  of  New  Grenada, — one  of  the  most 
heroic  souls  that  ever  honored  any  country  ? 

Can  you  not  hear,  as  the  saintly  host  of  glorified  work¬ 
ing  men  and  women  pass  before  you  in  the  train  of  the 
Lamb,  the  beatitudes  pronounced  by  the  Master,  reechoed 
triumphantly  by  these,  His  faithful  disciples  :  Blessed  are  ye 
poor !  _  .  .  Blessed  are  ye  that  hunger  now  !  .  .  .  Blessed 
are  the  meek.  .  .  . 

Will  you  learn  what  the  holiest  men  known  in  the  history 
of  the  Church  thought,  under  divine  teaching,  of  the  ex¬ 
alted  sanctity  to  which  every  laborer,  every  working  man 
and  woman,  every  tiller  of  the  soil  the  whole  world  over 
can  be,  by  cultivating  their  hearts  aright  and  making  them 
like  the  heart  of  the  Master,  meek  and  humble,  patient  and 
charitable  % 

“  When  Blessed  Anthony,”  says  the  historian  of  the 
fathers,  “prayed  in  his  cell,  he  heard  a  voice,  saying,  ‘  An¬ 
thony,  you  have  not  yet  reached  the  measure  of  a  tanner 
in  Alexandria.’  The  next  day,  taking  up  his  staff,  the  old 
man  set  out  for  the  city,  and  having  come  to  the  tanner’s 
house,  he  entered  and  asked  him  to  describe  his  manner  of 
life,  as  he  had  left  the  desert  to  learn  it  from  him.  The 
tanner  replied  that  he  was  not  aware  of  his  doing  any  good. 
Therefore , — he  added, — when  I  rise  in  the  morning ,  before 
I  sit  down  to  work,  I  say  that  all  this  city ,  from  the 
youngest  to  the  oldest,  will  enter  the  kingdom  of  Heaven, 
while  I,  for  my  sins,  deserve  eternal  j punishment ;  and  I 
say  the  same  thing  in  the  evening  before  I  lie  down,  and  I 
believe  from  my  heart  what  I  say.  ‘  It  is  enough,’  said 
Blessed  Anthony,  ‘  I  understand  my  vision.’  ”  * 

Would  you  have  the  priest  enter  your  homes  and  preach 
you  another  gospel  than  this  ?  or  propose  to  you  a  dearer, 


*  De  Vita  Sanctorum  Patrum,  in  Migne’s  collection. 


THE  LABORING  MAN. 


459 


safer  model  than  your  own  Jesus  ?  or  say  to  yon  that  you 
must  take  up  a  gospel  of  hate,  and  strife,  and  violence,  and 
bloodshed, — instead  of  His  sweet  Gospel  of  patience,  meek¬ 
ness,  humility,  love,  and  peace  ? 

He  who  writes  these  lines,  while  he  was  a  poor  missionary 
in  the  backwoods  of  Canada  thirty  years  ago  (in  the  autumn 
of  1847),  and  while  sharing  with  the  poorest  settlers  among 
his  widely-scattered  flock  the  comforts  piety  provided  for 
the  priest  even  out  of  extreme  poverty, — set  himself  about 
devising  many  schemes  for  the  improvement  of  these  hardy 
settlers’  lot,  and  for  the  greater  good  of  their  brethren  both 
in  Canada  and  in  the  old  country.  The  government,  the 
Canadian  bishops  and  clergy,  and  all  the  most  enlightened 
men  in  the  country  united,  at  the  missionary’s  voice,  to 
open  the  waste  forest-lands  to  colonization,  and  to  aid  every 
farmer  and  his  sons  toward  possessing  independent  and 
comfortable  homes,  and  toward  securing  them  many  other 
helps  and  advantages.  The  missionary’s  voice  found  thus 
a  ready  echo  in  generous  hearts  :  his  sole  merit  was  in  hav¬ 
ing  uttered  a  timely  word  of  exhortation  ;  to  others  belongs 
the  praise  of  having  made  of  his  dream  a  great  and  living 
reality. 

And  this  we  say  here, — not  through  egotism, — but  to  tell 
the  reader  that  the  priestly  heart  which  speaks  in  these 
pages,  is  one  that  has  ever  been  devoted  to  the  laboring- 
man  and  his  best  interests.  Yes, — the  writer  knows  what 
noble  souls  are  those  of  the  toiling  millions  when  not  led 
astray  by  that  fell  “  power  of  ignorance,”  mentioned  in  the 
extract  heading  of  this  chapter,  or  fascinated  by  the  un¬ 
godly  and  unmanly  theories  of  4 ‘Ignorance  drunk,”  who, 
blind,  blasphemous,  and  brutal  giant  as  he  is,  would  this 
very  day, — if  the  spirit  of  Christianity  were  not  there  to 
prevent  him,  pull  down  the  whole  edifice  of  civilization  over 
our  heads,  even  though  he  should  himself  perish  in  the  ruin. 

We  happen  to  know,  also,  the  brave,  warm,  true  heart 
that  beats  beneath  the  rude  exterior  and  homespun  of  the 
working-man.  We  have  so  often  shared  the  hospitality  ol 
his  roof,  and  have  admired  the  native  delicacy  and  refine- 


460  TRUE  MEN  AS  WE  NEED  THEM. 

ment,  tlie  gentle  courtesy,  the  unbought  and  unbounded 
generosity, — and  all  the  other  virtues  that  lie  beneath  that 
homespun, — like  purest  gold  or  rarest  gems  in  their  na¬ 
tive  mine. 

What  then  ?  Do  we  not  wish  to  improve  these  virtues  ? 
Most  assuredly.  But  we  would  have  them  grow  in  the  sun¬ 
light  of  Christ’s  truth  and  teaching  ;  we  would  have  the 
rich  soil  of  these  brave  hearts  made  fruitful  by  the  grace  of 
Him  who  is,  for  the  peasant  as  for  the  prince,  for  the  work¬ 
ing-man  as  for  his  employer, — “  the  Way,  the  Truth,  and 
the  Life.” 

We  would  have  pure  gold  remain  gold  ;  only  we  would 
refine  it,  fashion  it  into  vessels  fit  for  God’s  own  altar  in 
Heaven. 

And  you,  0  dearest  brothers,  do  not  give  your  ear  or 
your  heart  to  this  new  gospel  of  hate  they  would  have  you 
believe  in.  In  a  country  such  as  this  in  which  you  have 
cast  your  lot,  you  are  free  to  rise, — you  see  so  many  rise 
every  day  from  your  own  level  to  sit,  in  Church  and  in 
State,  with  the  princes  of  the  people.  Be  conscientious, 
God-fearing,  sober,  steady,  persevering,  lovers  of  truth,  of 
honor,  of  honesty,  and  all  true  manliness, — and  God  will 
surely  prosper  you. 

Do  not  believe  in  the  raving  of  a  few  madmen,  about 
the  abolition  of  wealth,  and  all  such  idle,  destructive  fan¬ 
cies.  Do  your  best,  honestly  and  honorably,  to  become  in¬ 
dependent,  to  become  wealthy.  What  you  get  is  your  own : 
God  grant  you  to  make  a  right  use  of  it,  and  with  it  to  help 
others  around  you  to  rise. 

Look  at  our  magnificent  American  forests, — see  how  by 
the  side  and  beneath  the  shade  of  these  lordly  trees,  that 
are  the  admiration  of  the  whole  earth,  their  juniors  and  suc¬ 
cessors  shoot  up,  straight,  vigorous,  and  aiming  at  being 
one  day  the  equals  in  height  and  stateliness  of  their  elders. 
But  cut  down  that  glorious  forest  or  set  fire  to  it,  and  never 
again  until  the  end  of  time  will  such  a  magnificent  growth 
arise  from  the  ashes. 


' 


DATE  DUE 


h  p- A 

1  1998 

0  0  0 

UNIVERSITY  PRODUCTS,  INC.  #859-5503 


NORTHEAST 

LIBRARY  BINDING  CO.  INC. 

AUG  1979 

MEDFORD,  MASS* 


+S/63 


^Ipr 

HQ  1221  065 

0 '  R  e  i  1 1.  y  v  B  e  r  n  a  r  d  >■  >3  - 1 9  0  7 


T> 

A 

y 


mirror  of 


true 


worn?  ihood 


Ros 

Chr/.  ,«i 


V 

ioge 

'167 


